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Efficient new planes like the 7E7 and its successors could easily be stalled by the least efficient one-fifth of the fleet that’s now parked.

If traffic picks up and those parked planes next-genera-tion State of the Art airplanes too.

The parked airplane fleet is worth more to society dead

than alive.

until at the limit of a 747’s globe-girdling range, nearly two gallons must be loaded to have one gallon left at the destination. By contrast, a State of Art widebody plane would need to carry only 6,716 total gallons of fuel while transporting 173 more passengers.⁶⁶²

If the next generation of planes can deliver fuel efficiency at below the EIA projected 2025 jet fuel price of 81¢/gallon, as is clearly the case (pp. 79–83), then the discounters should spend the extra money to acquire these planes.

If they want to stay competitive, the future is already here: a 7E7 can save one-fifth of the fuel used by the 767 it replaces, but at the same or lower real capital cost.⁶⁶³

Yet rapid adoption of efficient new planes like the 7E7 and its successors could easily be stalled by the least efficient one-fifth of the fleet that’s now parked. If traffic picks up and those parked planes resume service, they’ll not only waste fuel and continue to bleed operating budgets (making air-lines even less able to escape from the fuel-cost trap); they’ll also slow the adoption of far more efficient new models, and hence the development of next-generation State of the Art airplanes too. That’s why, in Box 16, we propose to link the scrappage of inefficient parked planes to loan guaran-tees for financing efficient new planes. The parked fleet is worth more to society dead than alive—counting not just their fuel waste, but the oppor-tunity cost of their delaying the adoption and development of ever more efficient successors—and this linkage seems a simple way to activate bounty-hunters.

Getting generation-after-next planes off the ground

The underlying economics of State of the Art blended-wing-body aircraft are compelling even when compared to excellent Conventional Wisdom planes like the 7E7 they’ll ultimately replace. State of the Art planes will save 30%

more fuel than Conventional Wisdom planes, delivering fuel savings at only 43¢ per gallon of saved jet fuel, far below the EIA price of 81¢ per gallon in 2025. We therefore expect that these planes could be adopted by the air-lines. The question is when, and how that schedule can be accelerated.⁶⁶⁴ By 2025, EIA projects a 60% increase in passenger miles and a 130%

increase in cargo miles. To meet this increased travel demand, EIA proj-ects about 15,000 new airplanes to be sold between 2005 and 2025, a third

Crafting an effective energy strategy: Business opportunities:Revitalizing the airline and airplane industries Implementation

Even more efficient successor planes should be readied promptly to start saving even more fuel after 2015. Military requirements can accelerate their development.

662. Calculated by using average-widebody and SOA aircraft gal/seat-mile data from Technical Annex, Ch. 12. Seating (295 passengers) and incremental fuel burn (0.005 gal per flight-hour per pound of weight added) are determined based on a widebody aircraft fleet made up of 31% 747-400s, 51% 767s, and 18% 777s. Fuel reserves are based on Federal Aviation Requirement 91.151, which mandates 30 minutes of cruising speed fuel for daytime flights.

663. The weighted-average price of all 767-200ER, -300ER, and -400ER airplanes placed in world service in the past five years was $119 million (2000 $), while the 7E7 is estimated to sell for $112±4.7 million (2000 $), implying a negative Cost of Saved Energy.

664. Packaging issues may also arise in small sizes, such as for regional aircraft, but the sort of advanced-composite con-struction method used in the Lockheed-Martin Skunk Works’ advanced tactical fighter in the mid-1990s (p. 62, note 326) should help to fit more passengers and cargo into a smaller, lighter, and cheaper blended-wing-body airplane.

Implementation Crafting an effective energy strategy: Business opportunities:Revitalizing the airline and airplane industries

of which will be regional jets.⁶⁶⁵Airlines are willing to pay more for reduc-tions in operating costs: the investment per seat for long-range aircraft increased 130% during 1959–95.⁶⁶⁶But some airlines need financing, and all need superefficient planes to choose from.

Worldwide commercial airline production is largely a duopoly comprising Boeing and Airbus. These companies are in a continuous high-stakes engineering design competition to beat the rival’s performance. Currently they each have a new plane in development for release in the next four years (Box 14). Airbus is set to release the 555-seat A380, a plane designed to compete with Boeing’s 747, around 2006. Boeing in turn is designing the 7E7 Dreamliner to replace its own 767 and 757 models and compete against Airbus’s A330. Airbus is worried enough to begin to design a more-fuel-efficient engine upgrade for its A330, though that platform’s higher weight and drag will limit its ability to compete with 7E7.⁶⁶⁷Both manufacturers chose to target the competition’s signature aircraft, and each claims to have surpassed the other’s current operating efficiency by at least 15%.

Development costs are around $10–12 billion for a new model aircraft.⁶⁶⁸ Airbus projects that the A380 project will not reach breakeven until the 251st plane is sold (even longer if list prices are discounted). Based on the adoption pattern of the 747-400 released in 1989, this volume may take longer than four years to achieve.

Technology innovation is not just about improved efficiency, however.

Technological innovation enables, and sometimes creates, new business models. Airbus is betting on the continuation of the existing hub-and-spokes business model by even larger fleets, justifying gigantic airplanes.

Boeing is betting that the discounters’ point-to-point regional business model will spread to transcontinental and intra-regional flying. Boeing may also be contemplating design variants larger or smaller than the 7E7 base model to hedge its market-structure bet, whereas the A380 will offer less size flexibility. At any size, Boeing’s more efficient technology should be attractive to airlines facing volatile and possibly high fuel prices.

RMI expects that this battle will play itself out over the next five to ten years. If Boeing begins to gain the advantage, then its business strategy will have been proven by the market. We expect this to spur investment by all airline manufacturers in a more efficient generation of aircraft.

A complete cycle of new airplane development takes up to about a

decade, followed by another couple of decades to replace older models.⁶⁶⁹ Therefore, State of the Art planes would not come on line until 2015 or beyond, regardless of technological and manufacturing improvements, and much of their benefit comes after 2025. Our scenario analysis below assumes that after 2015, new State of the Art planes would be phased into the fleet. Of course, feebate-like incentives could accelerate this adoption, but may not be necessary. The overarching national aviation goal should be to ensure that new planes bought in the short term are as efficient

The overarching national aviation goal should be to ensure that new planes bought in the short term are as efficient as they can be (like 7E7); that State of the Art successor models are developed and brought to market with due deliberate speed; and that both airframe manufactur-ers and their cus-tomers find it advan-tageous and feasible to adopt the most efficient airplanes available at any given time.

665. EIA 2004.

666. Babikian et al. 2000.

667. Lunsford & Michaels 2004.

668. Wallace 2003; BBC News 2000; note 609.

669. Flug-Revue Online 2000.

as they can be (like 7E7); that State of the Art successor models are devel-oped and brought to market with due deliberate speed; and that both airframe manufacturers and their customers find it advantageous and feasible to adopt the most efficient airplanes available at any given time.

An obvious way to accelerate State of the Art civilian airplane development is smart military procurement, since blended-wing-body or “flying wing”

designs—under development by Boeing, NASA, and others since the early 1990s—and their associated technologies, such as next-generation engines, also have broad military applications, initially for tankers, weapons sys-tems, and command/control, and later for heavy lift and cargo applica-tions. The blended-wing-body concept is under continuing study by Boeing’s Phantom Works and Integrated Defense Systems branches for military use. A 17-ft-wingspan scale model was flight-tested in 1997 in collaboration with Stanford University, and an improved 21-ft-wingspan model is under development with Cranfield Aerospace (UK). DARPA and other agencies are helping with concept development for military applica-tions, and Boeing and its competitors would happily build on that expert-ise to bring medium-to-large blended-wing-body airplanes to the commer-cial market as market conditions warrant. Thus with airplanes as with heavy trucks, the key enabling technologies are of such strong military as well as civilian interest for both cutting costs and transforming capabilities (pp. 84–93) that military science and technology development should be one of the leading elements of any coherent national effort to displace oil.

Across the range of land, sea, and air platforms, this is most true for advanced lightweight materials, as we see next.

Creating a new high-technology industrial cluster Technological advances are generally and rightly considered the main engine of economic growth.⁶⁷⁰State of the Art ultralight-hybrid vehicles and their associated advanced technologies are in the same tradition as the technological changes that were so vital to the U.S. economy in the twentieth century. Throughout their lifecycle, these vehicles will consis-tently favor productivity production processes and supply high-skill, high-wage, high-value-added jobs with large and widely distributed economic multipliers.

Automaking has undergone several major transformations before, often triggered by new materials.⁶⁷¹Our proposal for the transformation of the transportation sector is underpinned by technological improvements in

Crafting an effective energy strategy: Business opportunities:Revitalizing the airline and airplane industries Implementation

With airplanes as with heavy trucks, the key enabling technologies are of such strong military as well as civilian interest for both cut-ting costs and trans-forming capabilities that military science and technology development should be one of the leading elements of any coherent national effort to displace oil.

670. For example, see Anton, Silbergilt, & Schneider 2001; see also Christensen & Raynor 2003, which argues that corporations accrue higher market value from their ability to adopt innovations.

671. Amendola 1990: “The choice of materials has always been one of the major technical problems in planning, designing and manufacturing a car.…

[T]he very history of the automobile industry is rich in innovations strictly related to decisive choices about materials used. For instance, the introduction of the Model T Ford in 1908, which is often referred to as the beginning of the modern automobile industry, was associated with a very important innovation in the area of materials: use of a high-strength vanadium steel alloy in critical chassis components. This innovation is considered by historians as ‘the funda-mental chassis design choice.’”

Advanced ultralight materials, engines, and other efficiency technologies are the foundation of oil savings and a stronger industrial and employment base. Their accelerat-ed military and civilian development should be vigorous, coordinated, and immediate.

Implementation Crafting an effective energy strategy: Creating a new high-technology industrial cluster

advanced materials and their manufacturing techniques, powertrains (especially using electric traction), power electronics, microelectronics, software, aerodynamics, tires (another materials-dominated field), and systems integration. Collectively, these form a new high-technology industrial cluster that will expand U.S. competitiveness beyond the trans-portation sector alone—much as the development of the microchip, cross-fertilized with other technologies, has created the largest and most

dynamic sector of the modern economy, and the information revolution in turn has transformed the entire economy.⁶⁷²How can another such co-evo-lution (in the automotive sector and beyond) be encouraged in order to synchronize the industrial development strategy? And rather than stifling this evolution with planning, how can creative policy maximize opportu-nities for the broadest and most durable kind of wealth creation?

RMI’s analysis strongly suggests that the military and aerospace sectors are the most likely candidates to build the initial primary market demand that would enable the advanced materials sector to gain the requisite scale economies. The diffusion of military innovations into wide civilian use has encouraging precedents. The best-known example is the microchip:⁶⁷³

In 1976, U.S. military purchases accounted for 17% of IC [integrated-circuit] sales worldwide ($700 million out of total sales of $4.2 billion)—a significant market share that gave DoD leverage in defining product specifications and directions.

In the next 20 years, the U.S. military market increased only marginally, to $1.1 billion, while the commercial market exploded to $160 billion. The military mar-ket now [in 1999] accounts for less than 1% of sales, and the commercial marmar-ket has become the dominant force in setting IC product directions. Although lower prices have resulted, the DoD is now compelled to use commercial IC products and adapt them to meet military requirements, as necessary.

Such investments often have surprising and serendipitous spin-offs.

Military R&D in advanced aero-engine turbines is obviously the basis of today’s modern commercial aircraft, which could hardly get off the ground without those lightweight, fuel-efficient, high-bypass engines.

Less obviously, those commercial engine technologies in turn are the basis for the combined-cycle gas-fired power plants that have rapidly trans-formed the global electric power industry.

The advanced materials we envisage for efficient cars and trucks, especial-ly the carbon-fiber composites, are historicalespecial-ly based on aerospace technol-ogy. The business challenge arises because aerospace applications typically have about a thousand times smaller volume and a thousand times higher cost than automotive ones. Direct technology transfer is therefore insuffi-cient; R&D is needed for mass production of advanced-composite struc-tures that meet the automotive industry’s requirements of high volume and low cost. As noted in our earlier discussion of the lightweighting revo-lution (p. 57), such efforts in the private sector already show promise, and military attention could greatly accelerate their application.⁶⁷⁴

The military and

672. This topic is discussed by Davis, Hirschl, & Stack 1997. In a July 2001 inter-view, Davis states that

“…the way that we make things—the tools and the technology and the science and the technique—all those things are such a fundamental part of the economy that when they change everything else changes with it. The main player today is the micro-chip, which was commer-cially introduced around 1971, because it makes so many other breakthroughs p. 137. In FY1977, DoD R&D represented 40% of federal spending for basic research and over 70% of all federal investment in microelectronics and elec-trical engineering (NAS/

NRC/CETS 1999, p. 138).

674. Whitfield 2004.

Non-aerospace military needs, especially for lightweight land and sea plat-forms, are an important pathway to this commercialization because they often need higher production volumes and lower costs than military air-craft. As previously discussed (pp. 84–93), military mission requirements focus strongly on lighter, stronger, cheaper, and more energy-efficient vehi-cles to fit today’s rapid-response and agility-based doctrine and to lower logistics cost and vulnerability. The military has the R&D budget to sup-port the development of advanced materials (composites and lightweight steel), and already does so to a degree. The military clearly has the scale.

If DoD were to adopt the changes proposed to its Humvee (HMMWV) production alone, a 10,000-unit yearly production run of the multipurpose vehicle would require 5 million pounds of carbon fiber. This represents over 6% of the current worldwide production capacity of carbon fiber for all applications (80 million pounds). By 2025, the U.S. automobile industry alone could demand ~1.7 billion pounds of carbon fiber, 21 times current worldwide production, corresponding to compound growth of 15%/y.⁶⁷⁵ And this rapid expansion is feasible: composite industry sources estimate that within five years the industry could be ready for cost-effective mass production of carbon-fiber-based civilian and military vehicles.⁶⁷⁶

The synchronized timing of the co-evolution is important. For example, Ford’s first round of Escape hybrid SUVs is limited not by the market or its manufacturing capacity, but by Sanyo’s nickel-metal-hydride buffer-battery manufacturing capacity, because soaring demand for Japanese hybrids keeps the supply chain rather fully occupied.⁶⁷⁷Therefore, military technol-ogy support should be launched now in order to have the capacity ready in time for the automakers’ shift. To minimize exposure to the cumbersome DoD budget process, early commitments should focus on DARPA and the more agile R&D and early-application Service organizations.

The new industrial cluster would bring national benefits far beyond mili-tary prowess and budget savings. It would create a significant number of high-technology manufacturing jobs, which we estimate to be roughly analogous to the labor intensity of the chemicals sector (2.3 jobs per million dollars of annual revenue using the narrowest definition and excluding all multipliers). The 2025 carbon-fiber demand mentioned above would fetch

~$8 billion per year, creating ~20,000 new direct jobs.⁶⁷⁸For our projected State of the Art vehicle production volume, these jobs may either go to the steel sector for new lightweight steel or to the polymer composite sectors, or to some mixture; market competition will sort that out, but either way,

Crafting an effective energy strategy: Creating a new high-technology industrial cluster Implementation

675. Based on 8 million SOA cars with an average of 212 lb of carbon fiber per car—196 lb/car (Hypercar, Inc. proprietary mass-budget analysis, D.R. Cramer, personal communication, 11 May 2004) times 1.08 scaling factor (p. 96, note 164, above).

676. Levin 2002. However, big speculative price swings that now deter investment in carbon-fiber production capacity would need to be smoothed by making futures and options markets in structural carbon.

677. MSNBC News 2004.

678. Calculated on the basis of 8 million State of the Art cars built in 2025, each with 212 lb of carbon fiber, and one manufacturing job created for every 43.4 tons of carbon fiber produced. Job creation numbers derived from Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers economic contribution study on plastics and rubber producers (McAlinden, Hill, & Swiecki 2003, p.25).

By 2025, the U.S.

automobile industry alone could demand

~1.7 billion pounds of carbon fiber, 21 times current worldwide produc-tion, corresponding to compound growth of 15%/y. The industry could be ready for cost-effective mass production of carbon-fiber-based civilian and military.

679. For a discussion of job impacts from carbon composites, see Lovins et al. 1996, Ch. 6.

680. “PricewaterhouseCoopers predicts that by 2013 the North American fuel cell industry will represent 108,000 direct and indirect jobs associated with manufacturing stationary fuel cell units….” (Fuel Cell News 2003). The Breakthrough Technologies Institute predicts 189,000 direct and indirect jobs produced by the fuel cell industry (BTI 2004).

681. Calculated from Bureau of Economic Analysis, Regional Economic Accounts, Local Area Personal Income (BEA, undated).

682. The U.S. currently provides a $0.53/gallon ethanol subsidy, and proposed a $1/gallon biodiesel subsidy in the 2002 Senate Energy Bill (Peckham 2002).

Europe has used a combination of oilseed-production subsidies and biodiesel tax exemptions (p.106) to ensure competitive pricing and therefore, market adoption of biodiesel (CRFA, undated). However, “...tying government subsidies to commodity prices has distorted the agriculture market and made farmers dependant on government handouts” (Hylden 2003).

683. The 1 August 2004 framework agreement to remove agricultural export subsidies (which the U.S. denies it has) and substantially reduce direct crop

683. The 1 August 2004 framework agreement to remove agricultural export subsidies (which the U.S. denies it has) and substantially reduce direct crop