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Norway Will Make All Short-Haul Flights Electric By 2040 (independent.co.uk)
Norway's public operator of air transport plans to make all short-haul flights in the country entirely electric by 2040. "State-owned Avinor, which operates most of Norway's civil airports, is aiming to be the 'first in the world' to switch to electric air transport," reports The Independent. From the report: "We think that all flights lasting up to 1.5 hours can be flown by aircraft that are entirely electric," chief executive Dag Falk-Petersen told AFP. The announcement confirms Norway's reputation as a leader in electric power. In a 2017 report, Avinor announced that in cooperation with the Norwegian Sports Aviation Association and major airlines, it had set up a development project for electric aircraft. Avinor said it had "called for Norway to be established as a test arena and innovation center for the development of electric aircraft." Avinor intends to reduce aircraft greenhouse gas emissions in the short term by phasing in biofuels in the coming years, and then build on these reductions by phasing in electric planes.
You can probably fly pretty much anywhere in Norway and to the capitals of her neighbours in that amount of time. I live in Canada, which is huge, but most of the traffic is on ~1 hour short haul routes.
2040 is still a ways off.
A timeline to switch over before the first successful prototypes been demonstrated...
Norway is a tiny speck on the world map made rich by oil with vast delusions of grandeur. In particular I'd there's three areas where the elite thinks Norway makes a global impact:
1. Peace talks
2. Eliminating poverty
3. Environmentalism
The first one leads to things like the Oslo Accords where Yitzhak Rabin, Yasser Arafat and Bill Clinton ended the Middle East conflict - that's pretty much what was promised anyhow. Strangely enough they also got the Nobel Peace Prize which Norway awards. The second is another chest-thumper as one of very few countries give 1% of our GDP in foreign aid, difference is of course we can afford to. In the global economy we're still a fly spec with 0.5% of the world's GDP, even if we bat harder than average with just 0.07% of the population. And the third is environmentalism, renewable energy and green tech, if you read the domestic press it's almost like Tesla exists because of Norwegian tax breaks. They've promised to *end* the sale of fossil fuel cars in 7 years, this is perfectly in line with that.
I could go on but suffice to say that the Norwegian economy is running a massive deficit made up for by oil fund yields. Over the next couple decades we'll see a massive economic downturn as the oil income dries up and the post-WWII generation retires where we'll see a very rude wake-up call to economic realities we haven't really had to deal with in decades. And that's when I expect this near unbounded idealism will end, we'll stop trying to save the world and start getting busy with saving ourselves. Though I'm pretty sure we've been spoiled rotten and instead of making the hard and unpopular changes we will end up burning through our savings to crash in a Greek inferno. But we have enough money for some decades so hopefully I'll be dead by then.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
We've had the capability to do this for quite a while, at least on the military side.
Can you point to a single electric plane that can carry at least 70 people? The Embraer 175 series is really the airplane of choice for short hop/short-haul planes, and it seats 75 to 85, depending upon configuration. What is out there, electric, that does that?
Remember, without massive tax subsidies and tax exemptions, fossil fuels aren't that cost effective.
Oh, so fossil fuels now get tax exemptions, not just tax subsidies? And solar and wind do not? Wind and solar are massively subsidized, especially when you take into account the much lower amount of energy we get from them. Without the much-more massive subsidies for wind and solar, they would be DOA.
People are just fearful of change: suppliers, operators, capital loans providers, and so on.
Some love change simply because they want to "stick it to the man" and want to "change things up" for no reason other than change. Forcing adoption of electric commercial planes - when there isn't a single, viable plane in existence or even planned - is extremely short sighted. But hey - it gets the no-nukes/hate-fossil-fuel crowd all motivated!
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Tesla isn't the first mass produced electric car, merely the first with a 300 mile range. Renault and Nissan were in the business before, and the latest offerings have 230 mile range, but were only about 80 a decade ago.