Flying on magic fuels

i started my first airline

at the age of five it was called rabbit

airways

after a toy rabbit i got from my

grandmother

rabbit airways operated a fleet of the

latest airbus and boeing models

that i pulled together from my toy plane

collection

i turned each piece of furniture in the

house into an airport

the ledge next to the stairs was

heathrow terminal 4

and our round kitchen table served

perfectly as my new york jfk

i coordinated detailed schedules and

begged my parents

to allow me to get up early or stay up

late so that rabbit airways planes could

land at realistic time

i offered the best seats and service in

the sky

with huge beds up front tons of leg room

in the back

and believe it or not super tasty meals

all inspired by international airline

ads that i clipped from magazines

or had seen on cnn

i come from austria and uganda and this

background has given me a wonderful

diverse view of the world

it also gave me my first taste of flying

the first flight i vividly remember was

on a british airways

jumbo jet to uganda i remember falling

in love with

every part of the experience there were

big

beautiful machines soaring through the

skies

a busy airport with a thousand moving

pieces

and smartly dressed crew jetting to

destinations across the globe

i collected books magazines and

recreated every flying experience i had

through my play with rabbit airways one

day

i remember digging into a special

edition of a kid’s science magazine that

of course

was devoted to planes in it i learned

for the first time that

uh planes were actually quite bad for

the environment and

burning dirty fuel and polluting the sky

shoot this was not good

i didn’t like the fact that airplanes

and that my rabbit airways

the most awesome and amazing airline in

the skies

was causing harm to nature i struggled

what to do with this information but

then i realized that this would not be a

problem

because guess what from that day on

my rabbit airways would fly on a magical

clean fuel

my dream was challenged as i grew older

as a teenager i became more aware and

more passionate about bigger picture

issues

the more i learned about climate change

inequality or growing population

i realized there were now more important

things to think about than my planes

as a nerdy high school student and an

even nerdier university student

i began to develop my understanding of

these issues in university

i decided to devote my entire

engineering degree to sustainability

i learned how to design products and

systems in ways to reduce their

environmental impact

i organized student conferences and when

i graduated i even co-founded a

sustainable design

startup with a best friend of mine

but here is my dirty little secret

on many weekends i would still sneak out

to the airport to go plane spotting

and i would get boyishly excited about

any flight i took

so one day i decided that i couldn’t

ignore this childhood passion

i wrote a physical letter to my 10

favorite airlines around the world

asking for a job a few months later

i landed in hong kong and walked into

the headquarters of one of the world’s

leading airlines you guys can take a

guess at which airline this was

my heart dropped and my my heart

raced as i walked into the door this

was exactly where i needed to be

there were big beautiful machines

soaring through the skies

a busy airport with a thousand moving

pieces

and smartly dressed crew jetting to

destinations across the globe

i worked on amazing innovative projects

with incredible people who taught me the

inside scoop of how an airline works

this was literally the best job i’ve

ever had i

loved the airline and i loved working

there

but i couldn’t shake off the feeling of

guilt and

honesty of my hypocrisy i felt ripped

apart

in the conflict between my two passions

aviation

and sustainability and i couldn’t really

see clearly how to resolve this conflict

but i now started getting a bit more

obsessed with trying to find a solution

soon i turned 30 and instead of buying a

motorbike and a leather jacket

i set out on an adventure to learn how

to make flying

more sustainable but let’s backtrack for

a second

how bad is flying for the environment

well

if you take 2018 as a reference year and

if you consider the aviation industry

a country it would rank sixth in overall

co2 emissions

that’s right between germany and japan

aircraft of course also emit a cocktail

of other greenhouse gases and pollutants

that come from burning fossil fuels and

the fact that they do so at high

altitudes

only worsens their global warming effect

and this problem is also only going to

get worse

we find ourselves in the midst of one of

the worst pandemics in history

but the economy will recover and

aviation will recover

and when it does it’s important to

remember that only about 20 percent

of the world’s population has ever

stepped foot on a plane

there’s huge potential for growth

to put this in a more personal context

here’s a look at

my carbon footprint i’ve taken

many conscious decisions to reduce my

environmental impact

for example i follow a mostly vegetarian

diet these days

but flying still makes up a huge

contribution to my carbon footprint

i live in hong kong and my family spread

between austria and uganda

between seeing them traveling for work

going to weddings

and exploring the beautiful region

around me on a weekend getaway

i might book 10 to 15 round-trip flights

a year

even if i ate a meat-heavy diet and

didn’t take some of the conscious

decisions i have

flying would still make up the majority

of my carbon footprint

this is shameful

the inconvenient truth is that if you

consider yourself

environmentally conscious but you still

fly a few times a year

then unfortunately you like me

are a hypocrite

but i didn’t wear this loud shirt today

to be the bearer of bad news

so let’s discuss solutions i am very

excited to share

that the magic clean fuel i used to

dream of actually now exists

it comes in a few different forms

the first is as a battery

electric cars are real today and soon

electric planes will be too within the

next five years we will have small

sized electric aircraft with about 10 to

20 seats

and a range of up to 1 000 kilometers

that’s enough to get you from here

hong kong to taipei from san francisco

to san diego

or from london to milan if you charge

these aircraft with renewable

electricity

from solar or wind they can have close

to zero

direct emissions when they fly and if

you consider the overall environmental

impact

that is from materials manufacturing

through use and eventually disposal

electric aircraft can have up to an

eighty percent lower

overall environmental impact than jet

fueled aircraft

but there are limitations batteries

today don’t pack

nearly as much energy as jet fuel and

they’re very heavy

that means that electric planes will be

constrained to short distance flights

for the foreseeable future

but just as we saw with cars there’ll

also be hybrid electric planes

that will be able to fly a bit further

by using both batteries

and jet fuel for our second magic fuel

imagine flying on a few tons

of your waste

have made incredible progress on the

development of sustainable

aviation fuels this is a whole class of

fuel that can be made from plants

municipal waste or even made chemically

using renewable energy

to be clear these fuels still emit

greenhouse gases

but depending on the process is used

their emissions can be cut by 60 to 80

percent

the best thing about these fuels is you

can blend them directly into existing

aircraft

and so they are key to making long

distance and higher capacity flights

more sustainable some airlines are

already blending small amounts of

sustainable fuels into everyday

operations

but supplies are limited and costs are

very high

huge investments are needed to ramp up

production and bring down these prices

this is going to be difficult but it’s

not going to be impossible

but is there a fuel that produces no

negative emissions

well the answer is kind of if i take you

back to chemistry class

you might remember hydrogen it’s that

first element on the periodic table

and it is also the most abundant

chemical substance in the universe

[Applause]

hydrogen is exciting because of an

important constraint in aviation

weight one reason that an airline limits

the number of bags you can take on board

aside from annoying you and squeezing

you of every penny

is that it has to control the weight on

the aircraft the heavier the aircraft

the more fuel that’s needed to get it

off the ground

hydrogen packs a lot of energy for its

mass

one kilo of hydrogen contains about two

and a half times more energy

than one kilo of jet fuel you can burn

this hydrogen directly in an engine

similar to what’s done today or you can

convert it to electricity

and drive an electric motor through an

efficient device called a fuel cell

in both cases the only by-product

is water so

great we have some exciting technologies

on the horizon

my magic fuel is nearly here but you

might be asking yourselves

what can you do today to reduce the

impact of your flying

well you really have two options the

first

is to fly less the global pandemic has

thankfully helped us rethink the need to

travel for a one-hour business meeting

or to jet to the other end of the globe

for a holiday

but these times have also reminded us

about the importance of physical

connection

planes are an incredible connector of

people culture

and ideas and while we can certainly fly

lice

i believe that we need this connection

the second option we have is to buy

carbon offsets

you can think of a carbon offset like a

voucher that you buy from a project

which reduces the amount of co2 in the

atmosphere

an example may be planting trees in a

forest

you can take this voucher and use it to

balance out

or offset the emissions that you’re

responsible for when you fly

some airlines sell carbon offsets

directly when you book a ticket

but you can also find them from

third-party organizations just to google

search away

to be clear carbon offsets are not a

silver bullet

critics will point out that they’re

basically just a way for us to pay for

our environmental

sins and so they’re not really going to

change our behavior

but they are important for managing

emissions in the short term

and so i buy carbon offsets for every

flight that i step on

you might be a little bit confused

or skeptical at this point we know we

can fly less

but that doesn’t sound very fun we can

buy carbon offsets

but i’ve just shared that they’re not a

perfect solution and in

theory we have some amazing technology

on the horizon

but it all seems quite daunting to

implement

so this begs the question is the future

of sustainable flying

a pipe dream my 31 year old self can

find reason to agree with this

skepticism

but my inner five-year-old won’t have

any of it

guys making flying more sustainable is

hard

it’s really really hard but

it is not impossible i’ll remind you

that we

live in a world of pipe dreams today the

world’s most valuable car company

makes electric cars and every other car

company in the world

is scrambling to keep up plant-based

burgers are getting

so good that you can find them at the

fast food restaurant down the road

oh and solar is now officially the

cheapest form of electricity that we can

produce

the entire history of aviation was a

pipe dream

the wright brothers first flight in 1903

flew for a whole

60 seconds and covered a distance of 250

meters

a little over half a century later the

concorde was flying at twice the speed

of sound

and the boeing 747 was carrying hundreds

of passengers across our oceans

my inner five-year-old believes in

making dreams a reality

as is often the case we know what we

need to do to make aviation more

sustainable

and what we need to do is really hard

but it is this daring to dream

that is going to make things happen

every little bit counts buy carbon

offsets today

and support better solutions as they

come to market tomorrow

even if these may be a bit more

expensive in the short term

at the same time remain positive about

what we can achieve in the future

this is exactly where i find myself

today

fueled by an amazing childhood passion a

conflict that tears between

two things i love i’m going to keep

dreaming

and do everything i possibly can to make

rabbit airways

and its magic fuel a reality

i look forward to welcoming you on board

soon

thank you

you