Some have announced their intention to buy the small, 9- to 19-seat prototype electric aircraft, which are essential for extensive routes in the vast northern region. The new battery-powered fleets would be available from 2026.

Northern Europe could therefore be an excellent laboratory for the future of electric aviation, as it is obvious that the needs are very different. From small local flights to transcontinental ones, the solutions will have to be different and will surely involve technologies that are, for the moment, only at an embryonic stage. Europe with seven of its members, has set up a project that some compare to the Airbus project (EBA). It involves all the requisite levels, from basic research to practical application. The first results are expected soon, because in this field as in others, competition is fierce. Japan is a few steps ahead (22% of world production is by Panasonic) and this is due to the fact that historically Asian countries are strongly linked to this sector (China, South Korea).

The conclusion I can draw from this brief prospective view of aeronautics is that in this field too things are clear; there will be no turning back. Fossil fuels will soon be behind us, even in the sectors where this was least obvious to us.

The main resource that humans need is fresh water, before any other form of food and energy. I was particularly interested in the work of an innovative NGO.

 

Water is a precious commodity and essential for human survival, but the speed at which climate change is progressing suggests that its scarcity could increase, with devastating consequences for all of humanity.

It is estimated that by 2028, half of the world’s population will live in areas threatened by water scarcity. Freshwater, which currently accounts for 2.5% of the world’s water, is being drastically reduced due to global warming, which is affecting glaciers and icebergs and causing them to slowly disappear.

Although these doomsday scenarios are still far from the imagination of the segment of society accustomed to living in affluent conditions, the major problem of inaccessibility to fresh water is real and currently affects some 2.2 billion people worldwide.

A recent report by UNICEF and the World Health Organisation found that one in three people worldwide lack access to safe drinking water and use contaminated or untreated water for washing, cooking and drinking.

The situation is particularly critical in sub-Saharan Africa. That’s why it was decided that Kenya was the most appropriate place to start testing this revolutionary plant, which has been turning salt water from the Indian Ocean into drinking water for about a year, improving the lives of the people of Kiunga.

A significant revolution for a village that is regularly hit by drought for part of the year, forcing its inhabitants to travel for about an hour before reaching the first available source: a well connected to a reservoir whose water is dirty and contaminated by potentially deadly parasites.

The success of this first plant has prompted the NGO to set up other plants to address and solve the problem of drinking water scarcity in different parts of the world, such as Colombia and Haiti.

The facility developed and built in just one month is called Solar Water Farm and required an investment of $500,000.

The solar farm is a desalination plant. It includes the installation of solar panels capable of producing 50 kilowatts of energy, high-performance Tesla batteries to store the energy produced and two water pumps that run 24 hours a day.

Unlike traditional desalination plants, which consume large amounts of energy and make the process extremely expensive, Solar Water Farm manages to produce better quality water without causing negative environmental impacts, usually generated by the extraction of salt, which produces polluting residues harmful to animals and plants.

The facility, located along the coast of the town of Kiunga, Kenya, uses advanced filtration systems to turn salt water from the ocean into drinking water.

The ambition is big, and it’s all the more inspiring for it! Every 90 seconds a child dies as a direct or indirect consequence of lack of water…

I hear a lot about hydrogen and it is difficult for me to understand exactly what is involved. So here’s why I’m offering a perspective after doing a fair degree of research.

 

However, at present, 95% of the world’s hydrogen production is made from fossil carbon resources (oil, coal, natural gas). For this reason, it is referred to as grey hydrogen. This production emits greenhouse gases and is therefore unsustainable in the event of a massive increase in the use of hydrogen.

Another option is to produce hydrogen from a very simple reaction: water electrolysis. An electric current is passed through water (H2O), which separates two molecules: hydrogen (H2) on the one hand and oxygen (O2) on the other. This process makes it possible to produce pure hydrogen in a clean way, provided that the electricity used to produce it is clean and therefore of renewable origin. Anyone interested in energy and ecological transition issues has therefore heard of hydrogen. But we can only talk about green hydrogen if it is produced from green electricity. This is where the challenge lies for an industrial scale roll-out.

The obstacles are not technological, since progress in this area has been remarkable in recent years. The issue is rather that of the primary energy source: green electricity, from photovoltaic, hydraulic or wind sources for example, must be available to produce green hydrogen. We know that the production of this type of energy is currently limited, so this is where we need to concentrate our efforts.

The state of affairs has changed considerably over the last 20 years. The technology is now advanced enough to allow its application in industrial tools and systems. The progress in performance is enormous. At the same time, the energy efficiency of fuel cells has been improved and prices have been reduced by a factor of 30 in 20 years. Cheaper and more efficient, the hydrogen sector has reached technological maturity.

At this point, I really think that hydrogen is a major asset in the transition to all-electricity. Europe is continuing to develop the sector, but the example is currently being set by Japan, which has the largest hydrogen-powered car fleet in the world and is aiming for carbon neutrality by 2050, thanks in large part to hydrogen.

I, myself, hope that the Japanese theoretical model can be applied as a practical model.