It’s easy to pin our hopes on techno-fixes for aviation, but we’ll be waiting for a long time for it to make an impact on emissions. The first electric or hydrogen-powered flights won’t be commercially available until at least 2035, and we need to be reducing emissions now.
Electric aircraft would only be viable for short haul travel, and there is still an environmental impact in creating batteries and generating the electricity needed to charge them.
Sustainable Aviation Fuel or SAF often uses biofuels, a key driver of deforestation, and synthetic fuels use fossil fuels in the making process. Read more about why SAF is not the answer here.