China to Build 97 Airports in 12 Years & the Future of Air Travel
by Michael Graham Richard, Gatineau, Canada on 03.25.08
According to China's People's Daily, 97 new airports will be built in China in the next 12 years. That will bring the total number to 244 airports by 2020. At the end of 2006, the number was 147, and it is expected that there will be 192 airports by 2010. This means that 82% of Chinese people will live within 100 kilometers of an airport by 2020.
It's not clear exactly what criteria the People's Daily uses to define what types of airports are included in its count, but if we compare apples to apples and look in the CIA factbook, we find that there are 5,143 airports (paved runways) in the USA vs. 403 in China. That helps keep things in perspective...
Still, regardless of who has more airports, it is obvious that the whole sector is fast-growing and will contribute more and more to global warming and air pollution as time goes on. How can we make it greener? How can we keep the many benefits of air travel and reduce or eliminate the negative side-effects?
There are many potential solutions floating around, but we can't know yet which ones will work and which will fail. That's why we must start working on the problem right now and not wait for a more urgent crisis.
As food for thought, here's a possible scenario:
Ground transportation is moving towards electrification (with batteries, hypercapacitors, hydrogen, etc, as storage mediums), because that's more efficient than burning fuel and losing most of the energy as heat. It is also easier (so far) to produce clean electricity than clean liquid fuels.
Unfortunately, airplanes cannot transition to electricity in the way that cars can. That leaves two angles of attack for improvement: Efficiency, and finding another liquid fuel source.
On the first front, many companies are already working on advanced planes based on the "flying wing" or "blended wing" concept. They will carry many more passengers using less fuel, thus reducing emissions per passenger quite a lot. On the fuel side, 3rd or 4th generation biofuels made from algae or specifically selected microorganisms could be used to displace fossil fuels and make air travel carbon neutral (there are already some tests done on using biofuels in airplanes).
This is just one possibility. If you have other ideas on how to make air travel greener, let us know int he comments.
::97 new airports to open in 12 yrs, via ::China to Open 97 New Airports Over Next 12 Years
See also: ::Virgin Atlantic to Demo Biofuel Flight, but Not Quite There Yet, ::Future Planes Might be "Flying Wings", ::X-48B Blended Wing Body Research Aircraft Has Lift-Off, ::Boston's Logan Airport Gets LEED Certification
These flying wings have always sounded very promising to me. I'm sure people will miss the window seats, but with LCD screens (or OLED?) and cameras outside the plane like in the A380, the view could be even better.
Flying wings aren't necessarily more efficient, go read up and you realize they aren't a silver bullet solution.
Just because you don't have a tail doesn't mean you don't have the same drag inducing controls that are required for flight.
Why not use more electric trains for domestic transit?
Sure, there is the issue of creating tracks, etc..
But in the long run..
I once heard a comment: "China and India will never be able to travel and consume as westerners have been doing.. There simply isn't enough resource on earth.."
China is not facing reality. Population is the problem, not lack of airports. This is just another case of China begging the question at everybody elses expense. In the case of China, nit-picking over cars versus planes is nonsense. Everybody knows the population of China is at an ABSURD disproportion with any population in the West. The true racist imperaialists are the Chinese. And we will not stand for it. Bless the hearts of Tibet and their courage to withstand the ugliest, most corrupt and determined of evil empires yet.
There are countries like the US and China that, given their expanses, must rely on air travel as a form of mass transit. In the US, without any alternative, driving the same distance by car is less green than flying. Aviation has made some amazing advances in the past 10-20 years, because fuel efficiency and noise reduction have been primary concerns for them. We need to make sure that people and governments keep investing in the technology necessary to keep us flying, but in a cleaner fashion; biofuel alternatives being key. The other aspect of travel which must be modernized in order for us to be safer, happier and greener travelers is air traffic control - IPCC and other authorities believe that the Next generation air traffic control will reduce CO2 emissions by 12-15% - take this worldwide and you will see something really significant. Governments worldwide need to focus on this to really make a positive change for travel and the environment.
Actually China is building a large network of bullet trains. In fact, when all the planned tracks are done it will be the longest network in the world. Gotta give them some credit where it's due.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail_in_China
Michael,
China is not much more densely populated than France (137 vs 107 people/square km and considerably less densely populated than Germany (229) or Japan (336!).
Population density is a somewhat arbitrary measure but I suspect it's an unremarkable country if you look at fossil fuel resources per person or mineral resources per person etc.
Nobody would be complaining about the population figures if China was 30 independent states rather than one enormous one.
I'm not defending China here, their record is atrocious on many fronts, just that you should be complaining about Japan and Germany's population even more than China's.
If we deleted the Chinese population tomorrow and kept all their resources, we still couldn't provide a "western lifestyle" for everyone on the planet.
The problem is with what it currently takes to provide a western lifestyle - not with the poor unfortunates who aspire to it.