Axel Krein, Executive Director at Clean Aviation, said the aviation industry has quadrupled in the last 30 years and emissions have reduced by a factor of two.
“This is not sustainable so our challenge is to develop technologies to make aviation climate neutral by 2050, which means we need to have our technologies ready by 2028, and the new products are ready to enter the market by 2035,” he said. “Technology development is one thing, but we will also be working on sustainable aviation fuels (SAFs) and everything relating to hydrogen.”
Latest estimates show that hydrogen combustion could reduce the climate impact of flight by 50-75% (depending on the extent of non-CO2 effects), and hydrogen-based fuel-cell electric propulsion by 75-90%.
While hydrogen-based propulsion, using fuel cell or gas turbine technology is potentially a key enabler in a sustainable, climate-neutral aviation system, the supply of renewable energy and subsequent production of green hydrogen will be critical to their market adoption.
Krein said it is managing a budget close to €5bn, and another €7bn of research is underway in Europe which needs to be connected.
“That’s where partnership is coming in,” he said. “Our concern is not only to execute on our own budget, but make sure the rest is flying in formation with what we’re doing.”
He cited its work with Clean Hydrogen, which is focusing on fuel cell components and tanks, while Clean Aviation is concentrating on integration. “There’s a dependency on each other. You need to find common ground and align technical roadmaps.”
Later in the presentation, he warned demand for hydrogen is going to massively exceed supply. “As a society we need to be clear on where we spend the precious hydrogen in the future. At the moment we don’t have an aircraft, but in 10 years the demand is going to be very significant.”
Continuing the issue of supply, Klaus Peters, Secretary General of the EU Clean Steel Partnership (ESTEP) – which started in June 2021 in the frame of Horizon Europe, in synergy with the Research Fund for Coal and Steel (RFCS) – said one tonne of hydrogen can yield 11 tonnes of steel.
“So if you want one million tonnes of steel you’re going to need 8.5 million tonnes of hydrogen,” he said. “We’re looking at a basket of technologies.”
On the point of synergies, he said, “When you go from research projects to industrial scale projects, many times the ‘kick’ is regional, and then going to a European level requires a complete change of consortium. The formal elements are quite complicated.”
Alan Haigh, Senior Expert, Research and Innovation, Horizon Europe at the European Commission, charted the development from TRL (ideas) to science, applied research and product, piloting and deployments.
“You’d be surprised at the ‘low TRL’ – these are bottom up programmes and anyone can apply,” he said. “The Life programme is an environmentally minded programme – it does deploy hydrogen – and the Innovation Fund is for larger scale projects. People think the Connecting Europe facility is just infrastructure for transport – it’s not, it’s also for hydrogen.”
He highlighted the role of ‘parallel’ synergies, providing the example of JIVE fuel cell electric buses and Mehrlin hydrogen refuelling stations, and ‘pipeline synergies’ pushing up the TRL line.