Aerospace manufacturers agree that the ability to produce hydrogen in vast quantities using only renewable forms of energy such as solar and wind power will prove the most critical factor in the aviation industry’s effort to develop the element as a viable, non-CO2-emitting fuel. In interviews with AIN, at least five major OEMs stressed the need for massive investment to develop the complex infrastructure required to produce hydrogen on an environmentally sustainable basis, and to distribute, store and disburse it as a fuel safely, all of which must happen alongside an effort to develop hydrogen propulsion systems for large and small aircraft.
Only if the development of green hydrogen production and the infrastructure needed to get it into aircraft fuel tanks safely occurs in parallel with OEMs’ development of primary and hybrid-electric forms of hydrogen propulsion can aviation…