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