A Zero-Emissions Airplane






The transition to hydrogen will require the decisive action of the entire aviation ecosystem.

– Guillaume Faury

Let us take for granted, at least for the duration of this column, that the problem of urban-land mobility and its relationship with the use of fossil fuels is solved with the adoption of massive electromobility solutions that use renewable sources and storage. But how do we solve the problem of air and maritime transport? It seems that the answer is found in hydrogen.

For that reason, on this occasion we will focus on the recently announced hydrogen airplane that is under development by Airbus, with the idea of being launched in 2030.

This is the industry’s response to other alternatives that are not so viable at this moment of technological development, such as electric and solar airplanes and airplanes that use liquefied natural gas. Regarding the first ones, the problem is found precisely in the batteries and does not have to do with storage capacity, but rather with the amount of power they can release.

A conventional passenger airplane, for example the Boeing 737, would require a battery that could store and release more energy per unit of mass than what is available at this moment, without considering that the cost is too high to be competitive.

On the other hand, natural gas would seem to be an option that combines low prices, considering that the shale gas revolution in the United States has produced the cheapest natural gas in the world with high availability and lower greenhouse gas emissions compared with jet fuel.

The problem with natural gas as a replacement fuel is that it has lower calorific power than kerosene; in order to be used, it would have to be liquefied natural gas, which requires investments and modifications to the existing infrastructure; furthermore, since its density will be lower, it would require doubling the weight of the fuel to maintain the same travel distance. In sum, development in that area has remained for small airplanes and local trips.

Considering this, the countries that are lined up in the development of the technologies that will define the future of energy see in hydrogen a possibility to transition toward airplanes with almost zero emissions and that could even be silent machines.

The concept is under development by Airbus and it is expected that it may be achieved by 2030, but the technology also has its challenges. The main one is discovering how to store liquid hydrogen during flight at very low temperatures and avoid the risks of the volatile fuel. However, in case of success, it would open a world of possibilities that could revolutionize the air transport industry and decrease the use of fossil sources.

As we pointed out some months ago, this may represent one of the most important applications within the hydrogen fever that motivates the most advanced research centers to take advantage of the opportunities to develop alternatives to continue with the advance of the energy transition even in the most difficult sectors such as aviation.

Ten years seem like a lot, but in scientific development and technological innovation it is a relatively short time that can charge us the bill as a country. With this panorama in mind, a public policy to promote science and technology for the energy sector was never more necessary. That would be a firm step toward true energy sovereignty sustained in the future and not in the old glories of the past.

This article was originally published by Business Insider México.
Date: October 7, 2020
Original Link: https://businessinsider.mx/avion-cero-emisiones-opinion-paul-sanchez-energia-circular/ [offline]
Archived Link: https://web.archive.org/web/20210515142831/https://businessinsider.mx/avion-cero-emisiones-opinion-paul-sanchez-energia-circular/ [Archived]

Obesity and Climate Change












It is assumed that the more calories you consume,
the more energy you will have, but that is not the case.

Obesity and climate change have certain parallelisms seen from the management of energy. In our times, where fossil fuels dominate the energy scene, the consumption of these sources has consequences, as we have already explored, in the emission of greenhouse gases, global warming and climate change. Now let us think of our bodies as energy systems and we will be able to observe these parallelisms.

The exploitation of fossil sources of energy is recent when we see the long course of the history of humanity, and it unleashed an increase in the quantity supplied and demanded by the economies in the world. We can think the same about the energy available to human beings; although today we can get large amounts of fats and sugars in any convenience store, before it was a matter of life or death.

Imagine societies before the Neolithic revolution, before the emergence of agriculture. Getting protein, fats and carbohydrates was not as simple as doing the grocery shopping online, but rather required dedicating time and effort to hunting and gathering, and caloric scarcity predominated. The fact that our body accumulates fat is because, in a natural state, it is very difficult to obtain and, therefore, it was important that our bodies store it, which is not very distant from the greenhouse process that allows storing the heat that our Earth receives.

By increasing the amount of food available in modern societies, today we face caloric excess that generates changes in our body and that, if it is not observed adequately, can generate overweight and obesity, which, in most cases, are synonymous with poor energy management in our organism.

Obesity has become the fifth risk factor of death in the world, since it is associated with the increase of cardiovascular, gastrointestinal, renal, obstetric, musculoskeletal, neurological, respiratory and even psychological diseases.

For their part, greenhouse gases produce an effect on the global climate, generating a significant increase in the temperature of the Earth and, this global warming, has a consequence: climate change. This forces societies to endure the consequences of a more adverse climate, the loss of microecosystems, such as some islands in the Pacific.

In such a way that more modern economies make a call to understand the impact of energy consumption on our planet in order to dissuade the trend and others create instruments such as green taxes or carbon bonds with the purpose of paying for emissions and their consequences.

In the same way, to keep the excess of calories in our bodies at bay, we have to reduce our consumption through diets that imply energy efficiency or, in some cases, pay for a gym to exercise or invest time to go out running. Even governments are beginning to adopt policies such as labeling to make consumers aware of which foods have excess fats.

So, just as climate change is associated with the abundance of fossil and cheap energy of our times that sustains the demand of economies, the obesity of our times is associated with the abundance of cheap calories that sustain the demand of our lifestyles. Nevertheless, unlike the energy sector that seeks to solve this problem through the adoption of renewable energies, a similar solution is not envisioned for us, unless we can live only from the sun and a balanced diet.

This article was originally published by Business Insider México.
Date: September 30, 2020
Original Link: https://businessinsider.mx/obesidad-cambio-climatico-paul-alejandro-sanchez-opinion-energia-circular/ [offline]
Archived Link: https://web.archive.org/web/20210515135209/https://businessinsider.mx/obesidad-cambio-climatico-paul-alejandro-sanchez-opinion-energia-circular/ [Archived]

Light Pollution










Let us position ourselves for a few minutes in the future, at a point in time where all the electric energy that is generated comes from renewable sources and where robust storage systems accompany the energy transmission and distribution networks. In that scenario, fossil sources are only used marginally in very specific cases, but the industry pales in comparison with the first decades of the twenty-first century.

The energy of this future has two characteristics: it is cheap and abundant and each additional unit does not increase the cost and, by practically not generating emissions, campaigns on energy saving have almost disappeared. It would seem that the only challenge ahead is the process of final disposal of first-generation storage technologies and solar panels that increase every year.

In this ideal world: can there exist a negative effect of an oversupply of clean and cheap energy? In this space I have proposed that even renewable energies could have a harmful effect on the environment if their use is not properly managed. One sample of this is light pollution, a problem increasingly palpable in modern societies.

The increase of light as a visual medium to transmit information has been possible because of two things: the low relative costs of electricity and the increase in energy efficiency in lighting technology.

In recent years, perhaps the greatest advance in energy efficiency has been in lighting. This has represented great savings for industries and businesses and has allowed more illuminated homes with less energy consumed; and it is that today an LED produces with 12 Watts light equivalent to a bulb of old that consumed 100 Watts and wasted an important part of energy in heat. This has generated savings between 80% and 90% in terms of electric consumption for lighting.

In such a way that this has allowed LED screens to be used for advertising and appear everywhere, which can have different effects on people from damage to sight to provoking epilepsies; or else they are barriers to free driving, since a strong light can provoke a decrease in the visibility of the environment.

Given this trend, it is common today to see roads, rivers, buildings, antennas and streets adorned with LED lighting, a trend that is estimated to grow in the coming years. Consequently, in our futuristic scenario, societies are destined to become permanent Broadways or Times Squares —in New York— using lighting more and more for ornamental and advertising purposes, thanks mainly to the fact that energy costs would approach zero.

Without a doubt, the question could arise: Is this something really bad? Perhaps not, if light pollution is regulated adequately to mitigate the risk as much as possible.

However, I imagine that light pollution constitutes only the tip of the iceberg of a series of problems associated with a future of cheap renewable energies without emissions. If you have any idea about it, do not hesitate to share it with me to address it more thoroughly in this space.

This article was originally published by Business Insider México.
Date: September 23, 2020
Original Link: https://businessinsider.mx/contaminacion-luminica-energia-circular-opinion-paul-alejandro-sanchez/ [offline]
Archived Link: https://web.archive.org/web/20220818205334/https://businessinsider.mx/contaminacion-luminica-energia-circular-opinion-paul-alejandro-sanchez/ [Archived]