Si le passage à l'électrique en ce qui concerne les transports terrestres individuels ou collectifs n'est plus une question technique ou économique, mais uniquement politique (pression des lobbies), dans le domaine aériens, les challenges sont encore nombreux.

C'est ce qu'expose Kevin Bullis dans cet excellent article publié sur le site Technology Review du Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, USA.  

- Olivier

How Aviation Can Come Clean - Advanced technology won't be enough for the industry to meet its own greenhouse-gas targets. (...) The aviation industry can limit its emissions in three basic ways--making airplanes more efficient, improving logistics to waste less fuel, and replacing fossil fuels with biofuels. But some potential technical improvements are limited because of the engineering requirements of airplanes. For example, it's conceivable that batteries and electric motors could one day replace internal combustion engines in cars. But batteries don't store enough energy to transport a commercial airliner across the Pacific.

With these limitations in mind, by 2020, new technologies could make aircraft about 20 percent to 35 percent more efficient, on average, than planes today. Fuselage coatings and adjustable wings, among other things, could reduce drag. Engines that run hotter and at higher pressures would use less fuel, as would engines that use gears to optimize the speeds of different parts of a turbine, and open-rotor designs that resemble and have some of the efficiency advantages of turboprops (...) - Suite :
http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/23561/?a=f


NB - Microalgues et transports aériens : Calcul purement théorique car il est évident qu'il convient de supprimer la majorité des vols court  et moyen courrier (et de les remplacer par des transports collectifs électriques du type TGV ou Maglev) et de garder les biofuels pour les longs courriers :

 


NB - Pentagone, USA -  La traduction en anglais (An algae based fuel) de mon article Un carburant à base d'huile d'algue que j'ai publié dans la revue Biofutur en 2005 est  citée page 101, note 9 dans le rapport Transforming the way the DOD* looks at energy; An approach to establishing an energy strategy, Thomas D. Crowley et al., avril 2007, OFT (The Office of Force Transformation). Le rapport est accessible ici :
http://www.stormingmedia.us/30/3007/A300764.html

*DOD : US Department Of Defence