What will airlines do when fossil fuels run out?

Factual Questions
1

What will airlines do when fossil fuels run out?

Baring an unprecedented and totally unforeseen technological advancement, energy in a post-fossil fuel world will be in the form of electricity (generated by nuclear power, solar, wind, etc.) or biofuels, from crops.

Electric cars and buses work fine, but I can’t imagine a commercial airplane being powered by electricity. For starters, the batteries would be too heavy.

So, are aviation-grade biofuels possible? Is it feasible/possible to have a jet engine capable of running on 100% biofuel?

Engines in many land vehicles can tolerate up to 15% ethanol, and even at this level there is a debate over how much food crops could/should be used to produce biofuel.

So, an axillary question is whether enough biofuel could even be produced to meet the needs of commercial aviation in the future.

What will airlines do when fossil fuels run out?

2

Oil will never “run out.” It will get more expensive as it gets harder to extract, and that will have an effect on things, but it isn’t going to just vanish in the foreseeable future.

3

Biofuel? It’s already being done.

4

Exactly. Price is relative to demand. As more people owncars and want to drive, etc., the price will rise until enough people say “that’s too rich for me”. $12 for a gallon of gas? How far and how often will you drive? Or instead bicycle to the station, take the electric train powered by coal-generated electricity to your work… Walk to the grocery store…

Of course, airlines have the advantage of being ideally suited for hydrogen use; a few large pieces of equipment that fly between a relatively small number of very large pieces of real estate. Hydrogen can be made from any electricity, even solar power. Unfortunately, the care and handling of hydrogen is not trivial. Also, creating hydrogen from electricity is not efficient; It would mean a huge nvestment in generating infrastructure. On the plus, it can be done offline and the results stored.

I suspect you’ll first see this done as experiment, then we’ll see it tried cargo planes like Fed-Ex that fly limited fixed routes and have less worry about turning passengers into popsicles if an acident happens.

Also remember that before this, much travel will become a premium luxury. We will return to the days of the 1950’s or 60’s, when an air trip cost a month or two of salary and rail (coal) or bus (will be expensive too) or ocean liner (coal) may be the transport of choice. Until coal starts to run low.

5

With an input of energy, most things are possible. This process can take in chicken entrails and hog lard and put out light crude oil.

6

Oil that’s underground that was formed by dead dinosaurs will most certainly run out. Not tomorrow, not in the foreseeable future* – but eventually.

Your points about prices skyrocketing as oil reserves dwindle are well taken.

But that just takes us to the question: What will airlines do when fossil fuels become so expensive that it becomes economically unprofitable to use them to power commercial airplanes?

Pretty much the same question, eh?

  • Actually, as a 50-year-old dude, I don’t foresee the end of fossil fuels in MY future. But the dwindling supply will certainly shape the lifestyle of my 14-year-old daughter.
7

This is the direction that current “short term” planing is going. Conventional engines seem to be relatively easily adaptable to the use of biofuels and there are frequent test flights along these lines.

My knowledge is pretty much based on news reports, but I’m not aware of any other viable fuel source currently being tested at the airliner level. I’m sure engine companies are trying all kinds of stuff in R&D labs, but I haven’t heard of any alternative fuel engines being built that may make an appearance anytime soon.

Any alternative will probably show up in military aircraft first; they are much more willing to try new technology than the civil sector, IMHO.

8

Do you mean “oil” specifically, or “fossil fuel” in general? South Africa’s Sasol did a lot of work on coal-to-liquids during Apartheid, when economic sanctions made it hard for them to import oil. South Africa has plenty of coal, and ran airliners on 50% CTL fuel for a couple decades. Recently, they’ve launched a 100% coal based aviation fuel:

If we can stand the environmental impact, and prices reach a point where CTL is economically favorable, we aren’t going to run out of coal in the near term.

9

Actually, if cars were to switch over to 100% electricity, it’s conceivable to have a scenario where jet fuel becomes cheaper. If airlines are the only ones consuming those kinds of fuels, the demand will be much lower. (Of course, I realize that fossil fuels are so versatile that this is unlikely to happen, but still…)

Natural gas is a pretty good solution. There are enormous untapped reserves and there are plenty of ways to produce it from waste.

I suppose some breakthrough in technology might even enable us to “beam” energy to planes. I know the military is doing research right now with a laser and photo cell combo so that they can recharge UAV’s in-air. I doubt it would be feasible for commercial airliners, but imagine the energy savings if you didn’t have to carry fuel with the jet.

10

Without cheap fossil fuels we’ll have to use electricity and travel by road, sea or rail. Going across oceans will take a lot longer unless a Transatlantic Tunnel can be built, then it could actually be faster than flying.

11

It will be some time before fossil fuels are obsolete or even cost prohibitive in my opinion. Whatever, it won’t come overnight. Don’t think in terms of carrying a string of lead acid car batteries for a plane or even lith-ion.

You can buy an imported induction charged plane at the hobby store for $25. Transfer the charge from the battery on the ground and let it fly. The storage capacitor weighs very little. But it only flies for a minute too. The point is that new technologies will catch up with the need, again in my opinion.

Granted, it will be a long time before humans can be teleported safely without a vehicle. However, what if ground/ocean based transit could achieve 1,000MPH? We would not need planes at all and weight would be a lesser concern.

12

While some oil may have come from dead dinosaurs, I don’t believe there is any theory that it is the only source, and I’m not sure any theory supposes that dinosaurs is a major ingredient in crude, instead it is a ongoing process of breakdown of organic material, in which case it’s still happening today, so oil will never run out.

13

Where do you think the majority of electricity generated today comes from?

Let me answer that for you: burning of fossil fuels.

14

Yes, but it’s completely different fossil fuels than for cars and planes. Most electricity comes from coal, hydro, and nuclear, in that order, with oil being a drop in the bucket. Vehicle fuels, however, all come from oil.

15

Those fossil fuels burned for electricity are almost never gasoline or oil, however, so dracoi’s point is possible. Right now, coal and natural gas are used to power large fixed power plants and oil is used to power vehicles, they don’t compete with each other. If coal and natural gas are also used (either directly or indirectly as electricity or hydrogen sources) to power some segment of vehicles, dracoi posits that the remaining segment might be able to use oil more efficiently and cheaply.

My own WAG is that the economics that would force land vehicles to switch away from petroleum-based fuels to alternatives are going to be truly dire. So dire, in fact, that alternatives are cheaper than petroleum even if only a segment of the transportation market continues to use them.

16

RE: “Of course, airlines have the advantage of being ideally suited for hydrogen use”

I admit my knowledge in this area is weak but let me ask; Do you mean just using Hydrogen as a fuel, in combination with air, or are you referring to hydrogen+oxygen as in a fuel cell? (I thought for cars they were talking the fuel-cell route.)

In the case of combustion, is it any easier/harder to maintain combustion at high altitude (with rarer air) then it is for jet fuel?

Just curious how this would work.

17

It wasn’t so much the dinosaurs themselves as the veggies they grew.

But what is the conceivable process by which every last milliliter of crude oil is extracted? This seems far beyond the realm of possibility, regardless of the timescale.

18

When you consider that it can take an hour or more to get to the airport, and from at the other end, and you wait an hour at each end for luggage - you can see the appeal in Europe of high-speed trains for short to medium distances like the US atlantic corridor. Meanwhile, some states declined stimulus money for developing high speed rail in the USA; the news reports around it suggested a tea-party motivated effort to not spend taxpayer money, combined with a desire to embarass a president of the opposite party. Not a good start to trying to develop useful alternatives to air transport for short-haul travel.

I have travelled the Shanghai MagLev - quite the ride, up to 431km/hr for a 7-minute ride from the airport terminal to the edge of downtown. The US test track (DC to airport to Baltimore) was supposed to start building in 2005, then 2008, then 2010, now who knows?

The problem with alternatives to auto commuter traffic is it requires significant infrastructure to reach all across the suburbs; other wise, you still have to drive quite a ways to the station. At least with intercity highspeed rail, you just need a big parking garage at the central station.

What WILL happen, sooner rather than later - prices for oil will go way up. Airline ticket prices will follow. This will happen in waves, due to one shock after another. The shortsighted airlines will assume things will return to normal after “this crisis” is over, and not cut back enough, and go under. The smart airlines will plan for longer term high prices - less capacity, more efficient airliners, etc (the dreamliner was aimed for this market). Point to point may become more efficient than hub traffic, since a substantial amount of the cost of flying is taking off; ticket prices that exploit the market for last minute travel may become more complex, as airlines do whatever they can to squeeze revenue from otherwise empty seats.

We have passed peak oil according to many pundits (cue the Great Debate). Places like the big Chinese cities may as well be first world - they are wall-to-wall cars, no longer bicycles. Places like Bangkok are notorious for traffic jams. Indian cities are catching up fast. Russia has plenty of cars now. Whatever gas we don’t or can’t buy, others will. If we discovered another Saudi Arabia, it would not solve the problem.

Cars can run with smaller, less powerful engines; with electric assist or hybrid technologies, like the Prius or Chevy Volt; or even pure battery power. A hybrid works because typical cruising for an auto uses about half or less of the peak power output of a typical engine; use use battery asist to accelerate, recapture braking energy in stop-and-go traffic. Aircraft do not have that luxury, they typically cruise close 80% or more of peak engine power. Batteries are heavy, which is not a problem for smaller wheeled vehicles - but does not work for aircraft.

Biofuel is cutesy green, but in the long run not a solution. There is not enough biomaterial to match the amount of oil we need.

19

It might well be part of a solution, though. If cars all go electric, and high-speed trains replace most of the current air corridors, then biofuels might be enough to supply the few air routes that are left (the ones that are long enough, or that cross oceans, that trains wouldn’t be practical).

And “high-speed rail” should not be thought of as synonymous with “maglev”. Maglev trains are only a novelty right now except possibly in an extremely narrow niche, and will remain such at least until we develop a room-temperature superconductor (if ever). But high-speed wheeled trains are a proven technology, and already well-established in Europe and Japan. The US isn’t as well-suited to them as Europe and Japan are, but as flying gets more expensive, the market will surely open up.

20

I think md2000 wasn’t referring to the propulsion side of things, but rather to the required infrastructure.

One of the problems with hydrogen-powered cars is that filling stations are few and far between. Unless you’ve got one close to your house or workplace, you’ll be wasting a lot of fuel just to fill up your car.