this post was submitted on 27 Aug 2024
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I think placing Aviation in the good to uncertain category is rather generous given the energy density requires such a large shift in airliner design in an industry that has only recently stopped requiring an experimental fuel variance to use unleaded fuel in the same model of engines that have been operating on the ground with unleaded for about half a century.
Biofuel and chemical synthesis just offer a simpler and nearly drop in replacement, with the main limitation being it costs more so the airlines are trying to drag their feet as much as their lobbyists allow them to, and somehow I doubt a complete redesign of nearly everything in aviation is going to be less expensive than switching to biodiesel.
The issue with biofuels is that we can't actually produce enough of them to support anything like current levels of aviation, at least not without substantially displacing food production.
The issue with chemical synthesis is that it's quite expensive.
So there's a possibility that we'll end up using hydrogen still.
It's a conundrum, because while biofuels are expensive, there are ways to make them significantly cheaper, for example refining organic garbage and waste into fuels.