The Jet Set
I’m just back from the excellent ASPO USA conference in Sacramento, where (among many other fascinating conversations) I enjoyed an illuminating discussion with a couple of air transport officials whose names and organizational affiliations shall remain confidential.
They were much more candid than the scheduled speaker Michael Boyd, who regaled us over lunch about the minor modifications that the chronically inefficient airline industry may have to contemplate in the near future. My private interlocutors were more blunt. Over the next decade, the industry will undergo an overwhelming transformation.
Today businesspeople and middle-class vacationers regard air travel as a normal and affordable, if increasingly tedious, option for getting from anywhere to anywhere else in a few hours. But as fuel becomes scarce and costly, airlines will go bankrupt and consolidate; most planes will be grounded and mothballed; routes will be cut. Small cities will lose commercial service altogether. Whole terminals at larger airports will be closed permanently.
Air service will continue to connect large cities, but flights will be fewer and slower (speed reduces fuel efficiency), with every seat filled. And those flights will be much more expensive.
In short, we will be returning to the days of the Jet Set, when only the wealthy flew. People were simply less mobile in the 1950s than they are today. And the future will likewise be characterized by declining mobility. The implications are far-reaching and take a while to appreciate. Think of the impacts to tourism, (including all its subsidiary components such as the hotel industry and the car rental companies), universities, far-flung families, the entertainment industry, scientific research. . . .
Of course for the time being we will still need a few vertical-takeoff vehicles so that “Helicopter Ben” Bernanke can make his rounds, dropping billion-dollar checks on beleaguered bankers. But for the rest of us, there may be no better investment than a durable pair of shoes.
image credit: Skott Яeader (creative commons)
I am not so sure. Yes, Air Travel will get expensive and there may be fewer flights. However, I do not fear a total collapse in air travel anytime soon.
The number of companies that are working on Algae Jet Fuel are increasing. There are many big players involved including Boeing, Airbus, Blue Marble Energy, Greenfuel, Aquaflow Bionomic, Chevron, Royal Dutch Shell, Ocean Energy Institute, venture Chemical, Solena, Live Fuels, Solix Biofuels, Aurora Biofuels, Petro Sun, Bionavitas, Mighty Algae Biofuels, Bodega Algae, Seambiotic and Cellena, Solazyme, Virgin Atlantic Airways, Continental Airlines, Air New Zealand, NREL, US Air Force, Baylor College, North Carolina State University, just to name a few.
Additionally, there are other Biofuels considered for Airplane use that have better EROEI than Corn Ethanol. I know Air New Zealand is also considering Jatropa based fuel in addition to Algae.
I would be willing to bet that while the number of flights may decrease, and such, I beleive that it will still be possible for people to take a vacation or visit a distant family member, or for a person in business to attend a conference in the upcoming years. But I feel that it may not be as often as today. However, if the algae fuel is scalable with the use of bio-reactors, and if University of New Hampshire is right about the size of land needed to replace petroleum with algae fuel, I feel that our grandchildren may have some energy to get planes up in the air and still be able to travel!!!!
Thank you Richard Heinberg for continuing to have the guts to speak the truth as you see it, for continuing to share your professional opinion with us. While Stephen Hinkle makes an interesting point that biodiesel made from algae may be popular at some point in the future, he does not mention that it takes many years to create, and for that matter retool, the air traffic infrastructure, so that it can run on another type of fuel. While there is an aviation grade version of ethanol, the world currently does not have a widely-applicable reasonably-low-cost viable alternative to petroleum-based jet fuel. We may have such an alternative in the near future, and that may be biodiesel from algae. Research continues, but we are not yet able to make the conversion, even if management at the airlines had the political will and arm-twisting clout to effect that change.
When your house is on fire, you can't buy fire insurance. When the airlines are going bankrupt because the business model they are using - which is based on petroleum-based jet fuel - is passe and no longer viable, they will not have the time or resources to effect a transformation to a new fuel technology. The time when the shift must take place is now, while we still have some resources and time to make the conversion. But we don't have the fuel to convert to yet, so we are stuck in an awkward place when it comes to air transport.
- Charles Cresson Wood, Alternative Fuels Management Consultant
Author of "Kicking The Gasoline & Petro-Diesel Habit"
www.kickingthegasoline.com
Indeed, 'twas a great conference last week. Clearly Michael Boyd did not sufficiently adjust his talk to his audience. Boeing's Peter Anast pointed out that Boyd speaks to airline industry audiences pretty much exclusively. Not surprisingly, there was tepid applause from the ASPO crowd.
I find myself contemplating the airlines' predicament in terms of its impact on destinations as well as on its customer segments. Dire, interesting (in utterly the Chinese sense) questions arise with respect to Hawaii and Alaska, for example, which rely so heavily on air transport for both business and leisure travel. I keep thinking that if the Hawaiian Islands become any more removed from the U.S., they'll eventually be stolen by the Chinese, Japanese or some other Pacific people.
As well, indeed, the tedium and hassle factor of air travel increase quite disproportionally to higher cost and the duration of flight (a flight on the majors, after all, is more often several hours than a few; invariably a flight of just a few hours yields a trip time of several, and that was nominally true even before the the fuel price hikes-spikes--your choice--of 2007-2008).
I consider the increasing hassle to be as foreboding an indication of the demise of the biz and its customers as new charges for checked baggage, higher ticket prices, fuel surcharges, what have you.
How 'bout the collateral damage, not just to hotels and car rental outfits, but to cruising? What about the custom of flying the Atlantic to meet your cruise ship in the Med, for example? That kind of practice will fall off rapidly not just as fuel prices rise, but as the hassle factor in the air gives the lie to the concept of cruising as an elegant and exclusive vacation alternative.
On the other hand, it does seem credible that, as fossil fuel descent occurs, the wealthy will for many years still be traveling for pleasure, and flying if it tickles their fancy.
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