Zero-emission large passenger aircraft powered by hydrogen will be technically feasible in five years, according to Airbus, but they will not enter service for at least a decade as the price of the fuel needs to come down.

 

欧洲飞机制造集团空客公司称，零排放的大型氢动力客机将于五年内扫清技术障碍，但由于氢燃料的价格因素，还需要至少十年才能投入使用。

 

The prediction comes from Glenn Llewellyn, vice-president of zero-emissions technology at the pan-European plane-maker.

 

He said that while Airbus planned to demonstrate hydrogen-powered aircraft in 2025, "over the next 10 years, hydrogen won't be more economic than the fossil fuel equivalent".

 

For passengers to be flying genuinely emissions free aboard hydrogen-powered planes - which emit only water and heat - their fuel needs to come from hydrogen produced via renewable sources such as wind and solar, he added.

 

In an interview ahead of the BloombergNEF London Summit, Mr Llewellyn said: "We already see massive increases in the amount of renewable energy being produced across the world. Wind energy production has multiplied by two over the last five years and solar energy production has multiplied by four."

 

A further hurdle is building up the ecosystem that hydrogen aircraft, along with other forms of transport, will need. This ranges from creating the fuel from electrolysis to split water into hydrogen and oxygen powered by renewable energy, to the actual transport of the gas and fuelling systems for it at airports.

 

However, Mr Llewellyn predicted that there was enough interest in the sector to make this happen.

 

He added: "There are a number of independent institutes that have mapped out how hydrogen costs can come down over the next decades. We see a 30pc reduction in renewable hydrogen costs in 2030 compared to where it is today, and a 50pc reduction in renewable hydrogen costs by 2050.

 

"They are exactly the kind of cost figures that are interesting for us, because it makes zero-emission aviation commercially viable in the 2030s."