European aircraft manufacturer Airbus is no longer planning to introduce a zero-emission hydrogen-powered passenger aircraft by 2035, The Wall Street Journal reports.
The green transition project in the area of aircraft engineering was first presented by Airbus in 2020. The company’s CEO, Guillaume Faury, announced that Airbus would launch the serial production of three types of aircraft with hydrogen-powered engines within 15 years. The largest of these planes would accommodate up to 200 passengers and would have a flight range of about 2,000 nautical miles (approximately 3,700 kilometers).
In order to explore the option of switching to hydrogen fuel, Airbus collaborated with 12 airlines, including Delta and Air New Zealand, and more than 200 airports around the world. Their research revealed a large number of technical issues. The need to adjust engines to the new fuel meant that the planes would have to store liquid hydrogen at minus 252.8 °C. Increased amounts of fuel and equipment would have a negative impact on cabin capacity and flight range. A hydrogen-powered plane would also require a new infrastructure chain, starting from the production of hydrogen fuel in sufficient quantities to its transportation and safe storage at airports.
The original technology, which feeds hydrogen directly into a conventional jet engine, was found to be environmentally unsustainable, as fuel combustion would still produce nitrogen oxide emissions. Instead, Airbus focused on hydrogen fuel cells, which use a chemical reaction to generate energy for an electric engine. This would make it possible to only produce water vapor, but in return would require a radical redesign of the airframe and propulsion system. Consequently, the cabin capacity and nonstop flight range of the green aircraft would be halved, going from 200 passengers to just 100 and from 3,700 km to 1,850 km, making the project much less profitable.
Airbus’ annual budget for hydrogen research totaled about EUR 400 million. However, the company ended up spending roughly EUR 1.7 billion on the project in four years. Sources familiar with the financing conditions allege that Airbus paid the bulk of the costs. However, some of the costs were covered by state subsidies from France’s national budget. In 2020, Airbus along with Air France became the main beneficiary of the French state support package totaling EUR 15 billion for the aviation and aerospace sector due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The beneficiaries were required to spend part of the allocated budget funds on the development of environmentally-friendly aircraft by the 2030s.
Now, Airbus is putting on the brakes. The company has cut the project budget by one-fourth, redistributed its staff and sent the remaining engineers back to the drawing board, postponing its plans for another 10 years. Airbus spokespeople claim that the delay will give the project more time to fine-tune the technology. “Our destination remains the same,” Bruno Fichefeux, Head of Future Programmes at Airbus, said in an interview. “But in order to get there, we need to adapt to reality.”
