Transport – June 27

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Many more articles are available through the Energy Bulletin homepage

A Tale of Profit and Loss – The Future of Air Travel – Part 2
Cameron Leckie, The Oil Drum: Australia/New Zealand
The first post on this series on the future of air travel1 looked at the fuel economy of the aircraft fleets in service with QANTAS and Virgin Blue on fuel economy and fuel economy per passenger perspective. Not surprisingly, the smaller aircraft were more economical than the larger aircraft, however the larger aircraft, in general, were more economical on a per passenger basis. Thank you for all those who commented on the previous post and the information that you provided.

This post gets to the crux of the matter. Profit and loss! No business can survive on sustained losses; sooner or later it will become insolvent. This post will investigate how long Australia’s two largest airlines, QANTAS and Virgin Blue can remain profitable in the era of high oil prices.

How long can they remain profitable?

This post will examine in some detail Australia’s two largest airlines with the aim to establish how long they will remain profitable in an era of high oil prices.
(25 June 2008)

Private Jets Targeted as Symbols of Inequality
Abid Aslam, Inter Press Service
Crusaders against inequality are accusing the private jet set of flying high at the expense of the environment, the national air traffic system, and lower-class taxpayers.0625 03 1

“The private jet is one of the most powerful symbols of extreme inequality,” research and advocacy groups Institute for Policy Studies and Essential Action say in a new report denounced by the business aviation industry as a “political screed” riddled with inaccuracy.

The super-rich breeze through congested airports and luxuriate in their own aircraft while the general public contend with long queues, degrading security procedures, and increasingly costly and uncomfortable flights, say the authors of the report, “High Flyers”.

…Then there is the environmental cost. The report says that each of four passengers flying a Cessna Citation X business jet between Los Angeles and New York emits about five times as much carbon dioxide as one of an unspecified number of passengers on an unspecified type of commercial airplane on the same route.
(25 June 2008)

Brunswick to Shut Boat Plants, May Cut 10% of Jobs
Andrea Snyder and Meg Tirrell, Bloomberg
Brunswick Corp., the maker of Sea Ray yachts and Boston Whaler fishing boats, plans to close four more North American plants and may fire as much as 10 percent of its workforce to slash costs after U.S. powerboat sales fell to the lowest in more than 40 years.

… Consumers’ “ability and desire” to buy boats as well as Brunswick billiard tables and fitness equipment has been reduced by a shrinking U.S. job market, surging fuel prices and declining home values, Chief Executive Officer Dustan McCoy said in the statement.
(26 June 2008)
Contributor Jersey Geoff writes:
I worked in this industry from 1976 to 1982 – no picnic then due to fuel prices. Now the industry is reeling worse than ever. Once upon a time this was an activity for the middle class – now no longer as this biggest name in the industry is finding out.

If you thought it couldn’t get much worse: marine gas has been reformulated to include ethanol. Many boats have built-in fiberglass tanks which quite simply dissolve with even E10. This means existing owners will have a miserable and costly repair required even if they can sell their boats. This is the “cherry on the cake at the wake” …

Move people, not metal
Kurt Cobb, Scitizen
Our current transportation system uses enormous amounts of energy primarily to move the weight of vehicles which transport passengers and freight. Bill James thinks we can improve transportation energy efficiency by an order of magnitude if we focus on moving the weight of passengers and freight instead of the weight of the vehicles that carry them.

Why move a ton to move a person? It’s a very good question, and one that Bill James, whose background is in statistical process controls, began thinking about years ago. In 1999 he filed a patent for what he calls a physical Internet design for transportation. It’s an on-demand networked solution for transportation that uses packet switching ideas currently associated with the Internet to move people and freight.

His idea has taken shape as the JPod, a cross between a gondola and a monorail.

… While such systems aren’t the only possible solutions, they have the advantage of being able to work with existing transportation infrastructure such as trains, planes and buses along existing right-of-ways. And, they have the potential to replace the worst transportation villains, personal automobiles. This is especially true in cities plagued by traffic congestion.
(25 June 2008)

Hydrogen Fuel Cell Technology, And Hydrogen Car Kits
Nick Earl
The rising prices of fuel in the US and correspondingly across the globe, are pushing many people to lool for alternatives. Hydrogen car conversion technology for automobiles is becoming wildy popular as a result of this. This technology seems to becoming popluar at a crucial time, and it could not have come any later.

Their are several different options for consumers looking to begin utilizing this newly popular technology. To begin with, all the major car companies are bringing out new car models incorporating hydrogen fuel cell engine designs right into framework of the car design. Secondly, commercial versions of hydrogen car kits are available through many different sources, and many sellers on Ebay even are creating their own versions of the kits and selling them via that medium.

Thirdly, there are many different guides on the market currently, giving instruction on how to build your own hydrogen car kit. These guides are good in that many people can not afford to buy a new car, and even the option of buying a premade commercial hydrogen car kit is out of many peoples financial reach.

This concept and the associated commercial products are hugely popular at the moment, and it looks like they will continue to become increasingly so. The term “run your car on water” is searched for over 3000 times per day, which just shows how many people are interested in finding an alternative to the traditional and soon to be extinct use of gasoline as a fuel source for our transport.

As most people are aware peak oil is already becoming extinct, and we are now chewing into the second half of the worlds oil supplies, with oil usage increasing hugely all the time. If it has only taken since the beginning of the industrial revolution to get to this stage, then that really does not leave us long to get our act together and find and start integrating alternatives, such as hydrogen fuel cell technology.
(26 June 2008)
Nick Earl writes:
If readers are interested in finding out more about hydrogen fuel cell technology and hydrogen car kits in particular, they can visit http://www.hydrogencarkit.net for more information.

BA: If something sounds too good to be true, it probably isn’t. Does anyone have links to critical articles about these schemes?