Decarbonizing The Aerospace Industry
The conversation covered a lot of ground; here are 5 key highlights:??
1) Once-in-a-generation Transformation of the Aerospace Sector
As to what fires me up… I think really being able to play a role in a once-in-a-generation transformation of the aerospace sector, which is a sector that's got some of the world's most exciting technologies and plays such an important social and economic role globally. Transforming the sector, getting to net zero, as well as realizing the growth opportunity within aerospace, I think is really exciting, and definitely fires me up.
"being able to play a role in a once-in-a-generation transformation of the aerospace sector"
2) The Most Viable Zero-carbon Emission Fuel
So, the team found that liquid hydrogen is actually the most viable zero-carbon emission fuel. And that it has potential both for fuel cell applications, but also combustion - in a gas turbine - for larger aircraft that can go longer distances and carry more passengers. Which was quite an exciting development actually. I think prior to FlyZero Projects hydrogen probably wasn't taken as seriously as it could or should have been as a potential fuel.
3) The Challenges with the Overall Aviation Ecosystem
Obviously, these technologies need to be developed, right? So there's that. But I think the really big challenge at the moment is that the sector will need to go through such a big transformation to get to net zero. It's really dependent on progress within a number of other areas in the overall aviation ecosystem. For example, the aerospace companies aren't going to develop hydrogen-powered aircraft unless it's clear that the airlines are going to buy them. And the airlines won't buy them unless it's clear that the airports have the infrastructure to refuel the aircraft. And then investors aren't going to invest unless it's clear that the market's going to materialize. And it's that investment that's needed, that's going to unlock all of this in the first place. So we really need to be thinking about how the whole value chain can be incentivized to go through that transformation in lockstep.
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4) Getting to Net Zero
When you think about getting to net zero, there are a number of things that I think we will start to see adopted in aviation. We haven't talked about sustainable aviation fuel (SAF),?which is definitely a part of the answer, which can be effectively used as a drop in fuel for current generations of aircraft. I think that's a really important part of getting to net zero rather than absolute zero if you like. And we'll start to see more and more adoption of that.
But then when you come back to the technologies themselves and the priority technologies that I talked about around liquid hydrogen, I think we'll see real progress in the development of liquid hydrogen technologies for large commercial aircraft and the establishment of the test infrastructure needed to develop them.
5) Aerospace Companies Working in Different Ways
I think the other exciting thing that we will see in aerospace is aerospace companies working in new and different ways. Whether it's leveraging some of the emerging industry 4.0 technologies and development approaches to bring down development costs and timelines or adopting new or different innovation approaches, I think that will really help to unlock some of the technology innovations themselves that are needed to get to net zero 2050. I think we've got a pretty exciting 5 to 10 years ahead of us.
Nice!