Come fly with me, let's plug and fly away...

An article about the future of flying which doesn't mention Zeppelins. Hurrah !

Alice is an unconventional-looking craft: powered by three rear-facing pusher-propellers, one in the tail and two counter-rotating props at the wingtips to counter the effects of drag. It also has a flat lower fuselage to aid lift. Alice will carry nine passengers for up to 650 miles (1,040km) at 10,000ft (3,000m) at 276mph (440km/h). It is expected to enter service in 2022.

Crucially, electricity is much cheaper than conventional fuel. A small aircraft, like a turbo-prop Cessna Caravan, will use $400 on conventional fuel for a 100-mile (161 km) flight, says Mr Ganzarski. But with electricity "it'll be between $8-$12, which means much lower costs per flight-hour. We're not an environmentalist company, the reason we're doing this is because it makes business sense."

Is it just me, or is that a really quite astonishing drop ? If so, that's a very powerful motivation indeed for companies to switch. Anyone still using fuel is going to look like a crazy person. I was assuming that electric planes would initially be much more expensive than conventional ones.

The big problem with this is that 80% of the aviation industry's emissions come from passenger flights longer than 1,500km - a distance no electric airliner could yet fly. Yet the UK has become the first G7 country to accept the goal of net zero carbon emissions by 2050 - a huge challenge for the air travel business with 4.3 billion of us flying this year and eight billion expected to do so by 2037.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but my broad understanding was that aircraft emissions are basically negligible in terms of mass, but may be disproportionately important because of their direct delivery to high altitude and the production of contrails. I couldn't begin to guess what that means for carbon offsetting, but my impression was that agriculture is a far bigger challenge.

So logically, is the only answer is to ditch long-haul flights? This obviously isn't an appealing prospect for the industry. Rolls-Royce's Paul Stein says starkly that the world would be in a "dark place" if we stopped travelling. He argues that in a global economy "where peaceful co-existence comes about from travelling and understanding each other, if we move away from that I am very concerned it's not the direction mankind should be going in".

Why the age of electric flight is finally upon us

Aerospace firms are joining forces to tackle their industry's growing contribution to greenhouse gas emissions, with electric engines seen as one solution. But will this be enough to offset the growing demand for air travel? This week's Paris Airshow saw the launch of the world's first commercial all-electric passenger aircraft - albeit in prototype form.