Welcome to the very first post of Raven Reconnaissance. After long deliberation over how we should kick this platform off, we decided to cover a topic that we feel is not getting enough attention, especially during an economic era of thinking “green”.
If you haven’t been following the news, the discussion of climate change really gained traction when The Paris Agreement was adopted by 196 countries in December 2015.
GOALS OF THE PARIS AGREEMENT
- substantially reduce global greenhouse gas emissions to limit the global temperature increase in this century to 2 degrees Celsius while pursuing efforts to limit the increase even further to 1.5 degrees;
- review countries’ commitments every five years;
- provide financing to developing countries to mitigate climate change, strengthen resilience and enhance abilities to adapt to climate impacts.
Shortly after the agreement was adopted in 2016, Swedish Activist Greta Thunberg hit the news discussing climate change and thus really provoking politicians to get cracking on developing better solutions.
We’re not saying Greta was the first person to bring this up, but she quickly gained attention due to her age and blunt statements to political figures around the world.
Around the same time in 2018, AOC or Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (USA) shook things up with her agenda of a net-zero emissions future for the USA (and subsequently the world). This was dubbed as the Green New Deal, which is essentially a modernized version of the Original document first introduced by Thomas Freidman in January 2007.
GOALS OF THE GREEN NEW DEAL:
- Providing investments and leveraging funding to help communities affected by climate change
- Repairing and upgrading existing infrastructure to withstand extreme weather and ensuring all bills related to infrastructure in Congress address climate change
- Investing in renewable power sources
- Building or upgrading to energy-efficient, distributed, and smart power grids that provide affordable electricity
- Investing in transportation systems, namely zero-emission vehicle infrastructure and manufacturing, public transit, and high-speed rail
- Working with the international community on solutions and helping them achieve Green New Deals
NEVER WASTE A CRISES
We’re not going to get into the specifics of The Paris Agreement, nor the Green New Deal, however they are significant because if we take a look at how the world has been shaped over the past 5 years, we can quickly see that the western world has made significant movement towards renewable energy (with the intent of reducing carbon emissions). Critics may speculate that what is happening right now with Russia, Oil, Natural Gas and Energy as a whole, is a strategy to force European countries into becoming more energy independent.
Countries like France, claim that they are 70% dependent on nuclear energy from within their own country.
Even the PM, Boris Johnson, of the United Kingdom, has publicly stated “we need to get ourselves off of that addiction”. That implied addiction namely being “oil”.
ENFORCING ENERGY INDEPENDENCE
When governments simply cannot ask the public to stop pumping gas or heating their residences, what is their [government’s] next course of action? We see the answer in almost every other area of industry. Through Force. Case in point, recent medical mandates pertaining to Covid-19. Of course, We are only speculating, but one simply deduce this by looking into the industry most affected by the most recent crises occurring in Ukraine. To illustrate this better, see the picture below:
Where do the main sources of natural gas and oil flow into Europe from? Who are the two main aggressors in the current conflict?
Okay, now that we have that thought out of the way, lets assume that the adoption of green energy is successful and lets explore what the future of renewable energy could look like from a consumer perspective.
A few major businesses have already invested heavily into electric vehicles, Tesla being the most notable, however, companies like Airbus and Urban Aero seem to be even further ahead of the curve, with their development of E-VTOL (or electronic Vertical take-off and Landing) Aircrafts.
Another company, which has quickly gained attraction by consumers around the world is named Jetson, with sales of their E-VTOL’s already sold out for the calendar year of 2022 and nearly all of 2023. If we take a look at some of the designs of the future E-VTOL’S, we can see that the capacity for human transport varies from single to multiple people being transported. The one major underlying feature that all of these offer is that they utilize renewable energy as their source of power.
Although the regulations as per the FAA have not been clearly defined as who can pilot or how the certification of these aircraft will be conducted, one thing is certain, the future of transportation will Electric. A term coined by Airbus which we believe will be quickly adopted by the masses is: Urban Air Mobility.
We may be dating ourselves here, but flying cars such as in the film “The Fifth Element”, might just become a reality in the next decade.
CONCLUSION
Not only does this scale how quickly people can travel relatively short distances, but think about other business sectors which could utilize similar aircraft to move consumer goods around domestically.
We are already seeing this with Amazon and Logistics companies, Testing unmanned drones to deliver packages, government agencies use the same type of technology to gather intelligence and even weaponized some of these drones.
It’s apparent to us that these types of aircraft have solidified their place in the future market of transportation, logistics and intelligence.
What would this mean for the aviation industry? Probably not much of a difference. Although these consumer editions of air travel seem to be the way forward, their limitations of speed and battery life most likely wont compete significantly with intercontinental air travel, and if it does – companies like Boeing would quickly adapt to the new environment.
On that note, it might not be a bad idea, to find a place in the Renewable Energy market, so you can be at the forefront of aerial services and solutions development.
Full disclosure, none of the companies that have been mentioned have ANY affiliation with our team. We were not paid to promote them in any way.
