Melting ice roads require airborne solution

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This article was published 07/02/2023 (998 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

For the last 20 years, we have been trying to get through to anyone who will listen that cargo airships are needed to replace Manitoba’s ice roads. We all know the climate is warming, and the ice-road seasons are becoming shorter.

There is still time to build airships, but a new study suggests we had better hurry up.

Transport trucks need thick ice roads to cross lakes. Climate-model research by Woolway et al., titled Lake Ice Will Be Less Safe for Recreation and Transportation Under Future Warming, has a cautionary message: as climate change continues, ice roads will be safe for snowmobiles and cars, but not for tractor-trailers. Trucks require at least a metre of ice.

The Woolway study predicts trucking across the lakes will be reduced by 90 per cent when the warming reaches 1.5 C. Canada is currently between 1 C and 1.3 C of warming. The impacts will vary with latitude and other conditions, but ice roads will likely be uneconomic to build long before global temperature increases by 2 C.

In October 2022, ISO Polar held an international airship conference in Toronto. The first day addressed the demand for airships, and the second day presented airships in development. Three messages emerged from the two days of sessions:

1. Airships are now on the right side of history

Windmills, electric cars and dirigibles were all available in the 1930s, and all disappeared because of cheap fossil fuels and competitive disadvantages. Windmills lost out to coal-fired power plants, gasoline cars with better range ran electric cars off the road and airships could not keep up to the speed of kerosene-powered jet airplanes.

Now, 85 years later, green technologies are ascending. Wind turbines and electric vehicles are everywhere. The advantage of airships is that they can easily be powered electrically, with zero carbon emissions. More importantly, airships are finding a new market.

When the giant zeppelins flew across the Atlantic, no one considered air cargo to be a market. Today, IATA estimates that cargo jets carry $6 trillion in goods, or approximately 35 per cent of world trade by value. They also produce enormous amounts of carbon emissions.

Very little freight needs to travel at 800 km/h. A cargo airship flight at 150 km/h is sufficient for most shippers.

2. The need for cargo airships is real

Cargo airships can provide a solution for northern transportation regardless of the urgency created by climate change. As one representative from Nunavut put it, “Conditions were bad 20 years ago; now they are even worse.” Overcrowded housing, food insecurity and bad health can all be linked to the high cost and inadequacy of transportation service.

The other pressing need is access to mineral deposits. The Canadian Critical Minerals Strategy that has just been published states: “Critical mineral deposits are often located in remote areas with challenging terrain and limited access to enabling infrastructure such as roads or grid connectivity.”

The proposed solution is a pledge of $1.5 billion for new infrastructure. If all of it were used for gravel roads, which cost on average $3 million per kilometre, 500 km of road could be built — less than the distance from Winnipeg to Thompson. With this amount of money, an airship program could be built that could provide access to critical mineral deposits all over northern Canada.

The needs for critical minerals and lower transport costs to the remote communities are complementary. The airships bringing housing, food and fuel north to remote villages could stop at the mines to pick up loads of mineral concentrates for the journey south. This would lower the costs for both parties.

3. The industry may be approaching a tipping point

There are no technological hurdles to building very large cargo airships. They flew successfully in the 1930s, and now we have 85 years’ worth of advances in aerospace materials and components. Virtually everything needed to build a modern airship can be sourced from existing supply chains.

Eight different airship companies presented at the ISO Polar conference at Toronto. They are at various stages of development, but the first rigid airship since the 1930s will be in flight trials this spring off the coast of California. This should spur the whole airship industry forward — maybe just in time.

A week of really cold weather can be enough to make everyone to forget about the impact a month of warm weather has had on the ice road season. If it stays cold from here on, everything should get into the remote communities this year, but the accuracy of climate-change models has given everyone greater respect for their predictions.

The race is on to get enough airships built to transition from the ice roads to a permanent solution to northern access. Evidence suggests we do not have another 20 years to procrastinate.

Barry E. Prentice is a professor and the director of the Transport Institute at the University of Manitoba.