Launching Hydrogen-Powered Aviation
Hydrogen in Aviation (HIA) was established in the summer of 2023. The members are Airbus, Bristol Airport, easyJet, GKN Aerospace, Ørsted, RollsRoyce, and ZeroAvia. Johan Lundgren, CEO of easyJet, currently serves as Chair. HIA brings together leading organisations operating across the value chain, covering airlines, airports, manufacturers, infrastructure, and energy production.
The members share the belief that hydrogen-powered flight has the potential to deliver Net Zero aviation in a way that preserves the huge social and economic benefits of flying and continues to further enrich people’s lives.
Their core mission is to ensure the UK maximises its opportunity to be a global leader in hydrogen powered aviation. Hydrogen presents a significant opportunity to help realise Net Zero flight, as a feedstock for sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) or as a direct fuel; we will need both uses to achieve this.
This report focuses on hydrogen as a direct fuel and doesn’t seek to replicate already valuable work from cross-sectoral groups like the Hydrogen Innovation Initiative, to sector specific activities such as the Jet Zero Council’s Zero Emission Flight Delivery Group. This transition will not be without challenges, particularly as hydrogen production will require a significant amount of energy.
The HIA has been created to contribute to this rich landscape and help ensure political and government focus remains on hydrogen over the coming years and decades. To bring together this report, the HIA established three working groups, focusing on investment, infrastructure, and policy and regulation. Each group carried out a series of meetings, undertook research to identify milestones, engaged with relevant stakeholders, and produced a series of recommendations.
This report is a culmination of the work carried out by these groups, as well as the Steering Group that manages the activities of the HIA.
A full list of the recommendations is set out on p42, and the pledges that the HIA members have made are on p40. Next, we will look to work with all the various stakeholders to deliver the industrial strategy that we need for the UK to become the global leader but those whose solution is at reach with current we all think it can be
Read the full report here.