With the world moving towards environment-friendly and sustainable development initiatives, hopes are high that electric planes will be the future ‘mantra’ to achieve the ‘Zero-Emission’ target of the aviation apostles.
Expectations are high after the approval of the first electric cargo plane, which will operate on completely clean electric energy without any dangerous emission level.
Considered an important move towards contributing to changing the future of the transportation sector and its environmental impacts, it will just be a matter of time before the world embraces completely electrified air travel and, eventually, planes flown on solar energy.
“Although technology is not matured enough to run aeroplanes on solar energy per cent, the future will hold a bright picture as far as alternative energy in aviation is concerned,” said an aviation expert.
Globally, electric and hybrid-electric propulsion is rapidly revolutionising mobility technologies across industries, from automotive to marine, and the aviation industry is no exception.
“Electric planes will offset huge carbon emissions which high-speed aviation fuel used to emit, and with electricity, it will be zero-carbon emissions. In addition, it will help the environment recover faster, and greenhouse gases will be reduced drastically,” said Sunil D’souza, CEO of Travel Point conglomerate.
The first all-electric plane was successfully tested in Seattle, which landed safely just 8 minutes after it took off last week.
An Israeli company Eviation conducted the test of ‘Alice’; an indigenously built, larger than other electric planes, which can carry nine passengers and two crew members, or up to 1.1 tons of cargo, recently.
While Eviation’s planes are meant to travel no more than 460 kilometres, they are expected to excel in their mileage and speed in the future; their range is expected to grow to 900 kilometres once the battery technology improves.
Meanwhile, Airbus, the leading manufacturer of aircraft, has already begun to lay the groundwork for future industry-wide adoption and regulatory acceptance of alternative-propulsion commercial aircraft and urban air vehicles.
However, efforts to build electric planes started a decade ago, and in 2010, Airbus embarked on its electrification journey, developing the world’s first all-electric, four-engine aerobatic aircraft, CriCri.
Since then, the aircraft manufacturer has made significant progress in the electrification of flights, and the all-electric, twin-propeller E-Fan successfully crossed the English Channel in 2015.
The company’s electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) demonstrator projects, Vahana and CityAirbus, have completed many hours of rigorous and comprehensive flight testing programmes to ensure safety and high performance. E-Fan X, the successor to E-Fan that is 30-times more powerful than its predecessor, has provided invaluable insights into serial hybrid-electric propulsion.
As the world is aggressively moving to decarbonise air transportation, the only certified all-electric aeroplane today is a tiny two-seater, the Velis Electro, built in Slovenia.
The International Air Transport Association (IATA) has charted out a route map towards achieving its target of ‘Net-Zero by 2050’, which was agreed upon by the aviation industry to achieve net-zero CO2 emissions by 2050 in 2021.
The topmost channel through which the target will be achieved is through Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) which ranks at 65 per cent, while 13 per cent is from hydrogen and electric propulsion, 3 per cent from more efficient operations, and 19 per cent through offsets and eventually through carbon capture.
D’souza further said that the quality of the air that we breathe will be improved in a great way by positively impacting our health and our environment at the same time.
“It’s a way to go and sustain our ecosystem,” D’souza adds.
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