The Future of Travel and How to Make it Greener Today

Voyager Station, the first commercial space hotel, hopes to be offering room service in space as early as 2027. Back on the earth, the agenda at COP26, the UN’s climate conference, was dominated by a far more pressing need for the world to transition to clean power. The travel industry, with its CO2-belching long-haul flights, is hard to decarbonise. Yet, thanks to the innovators like Evonik, hope is in the air.

Short of forgoing international flights altogether, there’s little a green-minded traveller can do. But the aviation industry is determined to give European holidaymakers the beaches of Phuket guilt-free. The direction of travel is clear: optimising both the airplane and fuels. Established industry players are developing concepts of hydrogen-powered zero-emission commercial aircraft. To enable them to reach their targets while keeping production and maintenance costs low, Evonik developed ROHACELL®, a high-performance lightweight foam core often used in “sandwich” designs. In aviation, where every olive removed from the salad adds to energy efficiency, lightweight composites such as carbon fibre-reinforced plastic (CFRP) are increasingly replacing conventional metal structures.

As port backlogs continue to impact the shipping industry, airlines are picking up some of the slack and carving a bigger role for themselves in logistics. By partnering with trucking services providers, they kept the flow of New Zealand milk and Australian produce into Thailand and other countries steady throughout the lockdowns. If only the army of trucks plying the roads between airports and warehouses didn’t contribute to CO2 emissions. Evonik’s optimised ULTRASIL® 9100 GR silica — developed for the use in truck and bus (TBR) tyres — helps to counteract this by offering fuel savings of up to 8%. In addition to this significant contribution to environmental conservation, particularly in trucks with high mileage, ULTRASIL® 9100 GR also reduces the braking distance, leading to greater driving safety on wet roads.

Blueprints for greening aircraft and trucks are being drawn up. But what about decarbonisation holdouts—the heavy industry? A few years ago, to help the chemical sector along on its green energy transition, Evonik and Siemens Energy started the Rheticus project that successfully proved that a strong industrial base and effective climate protection are not mutually exclusive. The jointly operated pioneering plant in Germany uses carbon dioxide and water to produce chemicals through artificial photosynthesis. In an Evonik-designed bioreactor, bacteria convert synthesis gases into specialty chemicals such as butanol. The main nutrients for the bacteria come from the world’s first fully automated CO2 electrolyser designed by Siemens. Unlike space tourism, such breakthroughs might not make international headlines, but they are no less revolutionary for that.

While it remains to be seen what comes first — commercial zero-emission flights or honeymoon suites in earth’s orbit — to pull back from the brink of a climate disaster will require all the innovation the Earthlings can get. Evonik is proud to be playing an important role in this historic transition.