Myron Keehn was at the Canadian Hydrogen Convention to talk about new fuels and what it could mean for aviation on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
But as the president and CEO of the Edmonton International Airport addressed the delegates, there was no escaping the shadow cast by the crisis surrounding the traditional fuel source for today\u2019s planes. As Keehn spoke, the price and supply crisis in jet fuel continued to claim flights and distort summer travel plans.<\/p>\n
WestJet\u2019s flight capacity cut will grow to six per cent by June, after the airline already announced cuts for April and May of one per cent and three per cent. The airline previously confirmed that some of those cuts would affect Edmonton routes.<\/p>\n
Transat announced a six per cent cut to flights through the summer.<\/p>\n
In the United States, Delta \u2014 a WestJet partner \u2014 has announced flight cuts. And, earlier Wednesday, German giant Lufthansa, a Star Alliance partner with Air Canada, announced the cancellation of 20,000 flights over the next six months.<\/p>\n
Since the closing of the Strait of Hormuz, jet fuel prices have more than doubled around the world. And supplies in Europe and Asia or so tight that major airlines have said they may not be able to make it through the summer without major disruptions.<\/p>\n
\u2018Bullish on the future\u2019<\/p>\n
But Keehn said Edmonton is well-positioned to ride out the instability in the global jet-fuel market. Its proximity to four refineries allows it to be insulated from the uncertainty that\u2019s plaguing airports in Europe and in the Far East. And he said that airlines continue to be bullish on Edmonton and Alberta as a whole as a burgeoning destination.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m bullish on the future,\u201d Keehn said. \u201cI mean, aviation typically is an indicator of the economy, and we\u2019ll have some ups and downs of flight losses. But other flights will come back, and you\u2019ll see other announcements of flights coming into the market as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
He referred to the crisis as a \u201cshort-term hiccup\u201d in an industry that normally plans in 10-year cycles. And he said the airport was already dealing with the fact that Canadians simply aren\u2019t as interested in flying to American destinations as they were before U.S. President Donald Trump launched his \u201c51st state\u201d rhetoric. The airport found that Canadians didn\u2019t quit traveling, they just chose different places to go.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe lost some flights going to the U.S., particularly because Canadians just aren\u2019t prone to travel to the United States,\u201d he said. \u201cBut that will come back as well. Right now, I understand why people have that feeling around traveling to the U.S. But a lot of people travel to other locations, right? Or other places in Canada. So there were a lot of people discovering the Maritimes for the first time. Canada, it\u2019s such a diverse country. And I think unlike other countries, we have a lot of people that don\u2019t want to use passports. Being able to discover own country for a while is not a bad thing.\u201d<\/p>\n
At the conference, Alejandro Block, the senior environmental officer for the United Nations\u2019 Civil Aviation Organization, said the UN\u2019s goal is to have twice as many aircraft in the skies by 2050, but also operate at net zero emissions. That would mean that five per cent of domestic and international air travel would travel on hydrogen-powered aircraft. That\u2019s 10,000 hydrogren planes, requiring 20 million tonnes of fuel a year.<\/p>\n
Keehn said airports in Villeneuve and Edmonton act as the collective \u201ctest bed\u201d for alternate fuels. And the global push to get away from jet fuel has intensified over the last couple of months. He was just at a conference in Asia, and he said the major powers there are all \u201cdoubling down\u201d their efforts to get away from their reliance on fuel from the politically volatile Middle East.<\/p>\n
While we\u2019re not close to a hydrogen-powered passenger plane, the airport is using a hydrogen-powered runway inspection vehicle, and has runway sweepers that run on both diesel and hydrogen power, with artificial intelligence helping to decide when to use one power source over the other. And, the airport has hydrogen powered vehicles which help passengers locate their vehicles in the expansive parking lots.<\/p>\n
Keehn said this happens a lot more than one might think \u2014 a passenger goes away for a couple of weeks, then completely blanks on where the car was parked. That passenger can hitch a ride in a hydrogen-powered car and go on a search for the lost vehicle.<\/p>\n
The idea is to gradually make passengers comfortable with the idea of hydrogen as a legitimate fuel source.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo matter what way you look at it, it\u2019s the future,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s an awakening going on about not being able to rely on some of the supply chains,\u201d said Keehn. \u201cAsia particularly relies on the Middle East for a lot of energy, and they\u2019re realizing Alberta and Canada can be a big player in that space.<\/p>\n
\u201cHydrogen gives the ability to generate energy in a more democratized fashion. You don\u2019t have to have a large energy player to make hydrogen. So you can electrolyze water. You can use natural gas to do it. You can different methodologies to make hydrogen. And so countries are looking at, how do I make sure my national security is propped up by my energy security? Energy security and food security and national security are all tied together.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd while traditional jet fuel isn\u2019t going away, our reliance on it will wane. And the conflict in Iran has only accelerated this sentiment. While the short-term impact is a spike in oil prices, the long-term effect is going to be a greater push to divorce ourselves from carbon as the top energy source.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not going to only be hydrogen, it\u2019s not going to only be sustainable fuel. It\u2019s not only going to be traditional fuels. It\u2019s going to be all the above and solar and wind and other other energies around we don\u2019t know about now. So it\u2019s the toolbox. The percentages on the toolbox are going to change, but it\u2019s really important to be able to utilize an airport as a way to trial and test these new technologies.\u201d<\/p>\n
ssandor@postmedia.com<\/a><\/p>\n Related<\/p>\n Bookmark our website and support our journalism: Don\u2019t miss the news you need to know \u2014 add EdmontonJournal.com<\/a> and EdmontonSun.com<\/a> to your bookmarks and sign up for our newsletters<\/a>.<\/p>\n You can also support our journalism by becoming a digital subscriber. Subscribers gain unlimited access to The Edmonton Journal, Edmonton Sun, National Post, and 13 other Canadian news sites. The Edmonton Journal<\/a> | The Edmonton Sun<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Myron Keehn was at the Canadian Hydrogen Convention to talk about new fuels and what it could mean…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15544,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[1206,8158,52,8057,4574,8160,1211,8159,4067],"class_list":{"0":"post-15543","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-edmonton","8":"tag-air-canada","9":"tag-canadian-hydrogen-convention","10":"tag-edmonton","11":"tag-edmonton-international-airport","12":"tag-flights","13":"tag-hydrogen-powered-vehicles","14":"tag-jet-fuel","15":"tag-myron-keehn","16":"tag-star-alliance"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15543"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15543\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15544"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}