SBSP–Solar power from space

There’s a good deal of concern in some circles about ever converting the economy to 100 percent carbon free energy and that’s reasonable. There will be applications that specifically require fossil fuels well into the future like commercial aviation and war fighting, though we’d be smart to eliminate war. Although electric aircraft engines are on the drawing boards and have been tested, they are limited to propeller designs which means slower and lower flying. Nonetheless, there is a reasonable expectation that we could see commercial aircraft ferrying people up to 1,000 miles by the middle of the next decade.

Boeing air taxi, still using propellers.

The problem with electric aircraft is still batteries. According to the above referenced article “At present, 1000 pounds of jet fuel gives you about 14 times more power than 1000 pounds of batteries.” And unstated, as fuel is used, it relieves the aircraft of the weight it must carry, batteries hang around.

That said, it’s likely that we’ll be emitting CO2 well into the future–as long as the fossil fuels last that is. But that doesn’t mean we can’t get to carbon neutral or even carbon negative where we actually remove some carbon from the air over time. That’s one side of the coin, the other is how we’ll generate the necessary electricity to power our world without fossil fuels.