A hydrogen-powered airplane just made a record-setting test flight
A hydrogen-powered airplane just made a record-setting test flight

                            
    
Aviation startups, major airlines and manufacturers are all pursuing solutions to reduce the sector’s growing environmental impacts — short of encouraging people to fly less. In the United States, commercial aircraft and business jets contribute roughly 3 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions every year, along with other harmful effects such as planet-warming contrails.
                            
    
Many airlines are investing in sustainable aviation fuels, which can be made from waste materials, such as used cooking oil and captured carbon dioxide, and can be used in existing jet engines and fuel-supply systems. Last month, United Airlines launched a $100 million investment fund to support startups that are working to dramatically increase supplies of alternative jet fuels, of which hardly any exist today.
                            
    
However, as a long-term, zero-carbon alternative to fossil fuels, hydrogen is increasingly gaining favor within the industry.
                            
    
United has a stake in ZeroAvia, while Universal Hydrogen’s investors include GE Aviation, American Airlines and the venture-capital arms of Airbus, JetBlue and Toyota. Separately, Delta Air Lines is partnering with Airbus to develop a hydrogen-powered passenger plane. The aircraft manufacturer itself is building a demonstration engine to test hydrogen propulsion in one of its A380 superjumbo jets.
                            
    
Combustion engines like Airbus’, which burn hydrogen in its liquid form, might be capable of handling one-third of total passenger air traffic worldwide, according to the International Council on Clean Transportation. Hydrogen fuel cells produce less power than engines, so their use is likely to be limited to short-haul regional routes of less than 400 miles, researchers said.
                            
    
Those are the types of routes that Universal Hydrogen is targeting. The startup said it has agreements with 16 customers worldwide to convert 247 regional aircraft to run on hydrogen.
                            
    
Along with retrofit conversion kits, the company is also developing hydrogen storage capsules. The idea is to collect hydrogen from electrolyzer plants, which can produce the fuel cleanly using water and electricity. Hydrogen capsules could then be transported by truck or train and ultimately deposited directly into an aircraft’s body using a forklift.
                            
    
“Our business model resolves the chicken-and-egg problem between hydrogen airplanes and hydrogen infrastructure by developing both in parallel, and with a uniquely low-cost approach,” Paul Eremenko, co-founder and CEO of Universal Hydrogen, said in a statement.
                            
    

            
    