Decarbonizing aviation will be a long, challenging and
expensive process. A better industry could emerge
though.
The first commercial aircraft took off from St Petersburg,
Florida, in the United States, on New Year's Day in 1914,
taking a single passenger on a 17-mile journey to neighboring
Tampa.
Most modern aircraft are significantly bigger, technically
infinitely more complex, and operate within a far more complicated
infrastructure than the seaplane used in that historic 23-minute
flight, but the basic design is still recognizable - fixed wings
attached to a central fuselage and a liquid petroleum-based fuel
source.
After a hundred and ten years of incremental, evolutionary
change though, this basic footprint seems to be about to go through
a revolution. There are now serious discussions and credible early
designs emerging that suggest that the future of flight could be
battery- or hydrogen-based. Moving to either of these power sources
would be better
