Green pie-in-the-sky dream crash lands on the runway of reality. [emphasis, links added]
As communism did in the 20th century, the Green Revolution produced an infinite number of fantasies, promises, and unrealistic dreams.
Amateurish plans that look wonderful on paper are turning out to be complete nonsense when put to the test of reality.
Blackout News reports on the latest green wake-up call:
European aviation giant Airbus has halted the development of a hydrogen-powered aircraft, which had been slated to be introduced by 2035.
The major reason for the halt is reported to be the lack of necessary hydrogen infrastructure. In short: planners realized that it wasn’t financially feasible and it wasn’t going to work.
And, as is the case with almost every pie-in-the-sky green project, the cancellation always gets followed by a statement that the project is simply being put off temporarily and that it remains the target for the future.
“The company still wants to develop a marketable hydrogen aircraft and make a contribution to the decarbonization of aviation. The industry is pursuing the goal of becoming climate-neutral by 2050,” reports Blackout News. “However, experts are increasingly questioning whether this goal is achievable.”
According to analysts, the focus remains on alternatives such as synthetic aviation fuels, but these face formidable technological and investment hurdles as well. That too probably will soon join the ”it remains the target of the future” club.
Currently, demand for air travel is increasing rapidly and is expected to continue on its current trajectory for the next two decades.
Converting over to a completely new aviation infrastructure is far more daunting and complex than naive climate activists could ever understand.
“The focus will now be on the further development of sustainable fuels and increasing the efficiency of existing aircraft,” adds Blackout News.
“The vision of a hydrogen-powered aircraft is a distant prospect for the time being.”
Read more at No Tricks Zone
Perhaps someone pointed out to them that the Hindenburg used hydrogen and it didn’t end well!
But the much bigger problem is that you’d need an entire new infrastructure for producing and distributing hydrogen to airports. And since H2 is the smallest molecule it is difficult to keep it contained due to its ability to “leak” out of containers. Also it would have to be under significant pressure to provide enough “fuel” to fly a plane any distance. Finally, what is the source for extracting this huge amount of H2? Stripping it from natural gas? Separating it from H2O using electrolysis which takes tremendous amounts of both electricity and pure water?
Boeing also experimented with hydrogen airplanes but their concept was slush hydrogen. This is liquid hydrogen mixed with hydrogen ice. The extremely high storage pressure isn’t needed, but the required temperature of -434.5°F has its own problems. This is only 25 degrees above absolute zero. Heat leaking in causes the hydrogen to boil off and it takes a lot of energy to get it down to that temperature.
Both pressurized hydrogen and slush hydrogen don’t have an adequate supply. Currently hydrogen is derived from the methane in natural gas, which makes it a fossil fuel. Hydrogen can be made by electrolysis, but this is four times as expensive as using natural gas. In addition this places significant stress on power grids which are often near collapse.
I hadn’t heard about the slush hydrogen before but the fact that it requires extremely cold temperature to keep it that way would make it extremely difficult to maintain it in that condition. As to the ways to get H2 I knew that most of what is created is via natural gas. But I know about the electrolysis method because when I was a reactor operator on our nuclear subs we had an electrolysis plant to make the oxygen we needed and a biproduct was hydrogen which we bubbled overboard. It was nicknamed “The Bomb” because of the highly flammable nature of the hydrogen. We also had a CO2 scrubber to remove excess CO2 that was also bubbled overboard.
Time to get back to some Common Sense and forget this whole Global Warming/Climate Change Scam