Flying without emissions: how hydrogen is greening aviation

Val Miftakhov, CEO, ZeroAvia: I wanted to focus on the on the big problem, getting the entire industry, entire aviation industry, over to zero emission.

Robin Pomeroy, host, Radio Davos: Welcome to Radio Davos, the podcast from the World Economic Forum that looks at the biggest challenges and how we might solve them. This week: zero emissions aviation. Is it possible to fly without exacerbating climate change? We hear from a company that just made the first test flight of a 20-seater plane running on green hydrogen.

Val Miftakhov: This is the largest engine and largest aircraft anybody has ever flown on hydrogen power, completely zero emission.

Robin Pomeroy: Engine builder ZeroAvia says commercial airlines will be running small zero emissions passenger planes within a couple of years, and bigger planes and longer flights are in the pipeline, spurred by customer demand and government regulation.

Val Miftakhov: Airlines see that, fast-forward 5-10 years, you're going to have this type of regulation all over the place that really curbs your ability to grow and hurts your business. So they're now seeing the writing on the wall.

Robin Pomeroy: Subscribe to Radio Davos, where you get your podcasts or visit wef.ch/podcasts and don't miss our sister podcasts that you'll also find there: Meet the Leader, Agenda Dialogues and the World Economic Forum Book Club Podcast. I'm Robin Pomeroy at the World Economic Forum, and with this look at green hydrogen-fuelled zero emissions aviation...

Val Miftakhov: There are no scientific barriers, so we don't need new science in order to get there.

Robin Pomeroy: This is Radio Davos.

Aviation produces between 2-3% of the global manmade greenhouse gas emissions. And unlike cars, which can quite easily be made to run on electricity, which can be generated by zero emissions renewable energy, planes are still universally run on fossil fuels. There's lots of research happening on moving aviation towards net zero. You can find lots of information on the website of the World Economic Forum's Clean Skies for Tomorrow initiative.

In this episode, we're looking at one potential alternative to jet fuel: hydrogen, which can be created using renewable energy. And one company last month successfully tested its hydrogen fuel cell engine on a 20-seater plane. The hydrogen was generated by renewable energy.

To find out more, I spoke to the CEO of ZeroAvia, Val Miftakhov.

Val Miftakhov: This is the largest engine and largest aircraft anybody has ever flown on hydrogen power. Completely zero emission. We make our own hydrogen for these flights at our facility in the UK. So we showcase the ability to go fully zero emission in aviation from the entire lifecycle perspective. So, using renewable power to create hydrogen and hydrogen, used in aircraft produces just water vapour, nothing else, no combustion artefacts, no CO2. So it's a complete abatement of the climate impacts of aviation.

Even if you count all the materials that go into creation of the electrolysis and all the engine components, you have 90-95% abatement of climate impact of aviation. And this was the first flight of the commercial size engine and a commercial size aircraft. This is the engine size and aircraft size that we're looking to launch into commercial service by 2025.

Robin Pomeroy: Tell us about this plane then, what it looks like, how big is, were there any passengers on board? And also, I understand it's a two-engine aircraft. Only one of them was hydrogen. Why was that?

Val Miftakhov: So this is a 20 seat aircraft or a 19 passenger 20 seat with a pilot, which is the maximum size of aircraft in what's called General Aviation category or Part 23, as they call it. 20 passengers and above is air transport category. We are launching our systems first on the Part 23 category. That's the largest aircraft we could have flown in that category.

We also wanted to fly a twin engine aircraft for the initial flight for safety of flight. We want to have dissimilar engines. So we want to have one of our engines and one of the stock engines on the wings. That's by design. Because if our engine, which is flown for the first time, cuts off for any reason, we still have the second engine to safely continue the flight and finish the flight. As we get more familiar and more confidence in our engine, we are going to start flying 100% hydrogen configured aircraft.

Robin Pomeroy: And who was on it? Was it just the pilot this time?

Val Miftakhov: It was a crew of two. Our test pilots and flight test engineer. We're not allowed to take passengers on these flights, but we'll be able to expand the group of company employees who will be on these flights as, again, we get more experience with this new size of the engine.

Robin Pomeroy: Let's talk a bit about hydrogen than. We hear about it a lot as this kind of miracle fuel of the future. To make it green, though, depends on how it's created, how it's generated. And you're making your own. Could you explain to our listeners what is meant by green hydrogen, how it's made and how come that is zero emission?

Val Miftakhov: Absolutely. You're absolutely right. Today most of the hydrogen worldwide is made utilising grey process or brown process. Everybody has these colours for hydrogen now. But basically it's steam methane reforming - natural gas gets blasted by steam and disassociated into carbon dioxide and hydrogen. Carbon dioxide gets emitted so it's really not a good process for us.

What we are focusing on is electrolytic production of hydrogen. So electrolysis takes electricity and water, splits water with electricity, and the results of that process are just oxygen, that gets released to the atmosphere, and hydrogen that we capture and we use. So the emission content of hydrogen or resulting hydrogen depends entirely on the quality of electricity that comes in. So if you're electricity comes in from the renewable source, like solar panels or wind or geothermal or hydropower, you have a 100% zero emission hydrogen coming in.

And then when you use that hydrogen onboard the aircraft, you also have zero emissions of CO2. So the entire cycle is a zero emission cycle, but you have to do renewable energy inputs.

In more and more places in the world, it's quite easy to actually get that renewable input: So the southwestern United States with solar, Norway, Pacific Northwest with Hydro, UK with wind, some of the large areas of the United States with wind power. So more and more it becomes a really easy possibility.

We as a company, we have quite a bit of partnerships and also in-house efforts to build up that network of renewably-produced hydrogen at the airports. And we already have over ten airports as partners to deploy that infrastructure and some of the large energy companies that work with us on this.

Robin Pomeroy: So when will this become commercially viable? You set your target date is just in a couple of years. What kind of flights will those be? What kind of passengers will those be? What kind of destinations will those be?

Val Miftakhov: So the the initial launch - and we're engine manufacturers, we build engines and we bring also partners with the infrastructure to the target airports so our engines can go into any aircraft of that particular size that they're designed for. Our launch platform is going to be a 10 to 20 seat aircraft. Initially we're launching one, but then it quickly will follow with other aircraft.

So we plan to cover the entire segments, starting with 2025, of 10 to 20 seat aircraft. There are about 10,000 aircraft like that in commercial service. They tend to fly shorter routes: subregional, island transfers. So, for example, in Hawaii, there are a lot of aircraft like that flying commercial missions, passengers, Maldives, for example, there is about 150 aircraft like that. FedEx flies about 300 aircrafts of that size for package deliveries into more remote locations. So there are pretty sizeable fleets out there that fly either passengers or cargo relatively short distances that work very well with our system with hydrogen fuel. So that's the initial launch point.

And then two years after that, we're launching our larger engine that we already have done significant work on, and that goes into 50 to 90 seat aircraft. We're actually starting to demonstrate the capability so that size as early as this year. Commercial launch of that is 2027 and those are longer trips still regional, maybe 500, 700 miles up to a thousand kilometres. So we see that traditional regional carriers taking up those types of vehicles and transitioning their flights to zero emission.

Robin Pomeroy: Where will this end up? Will eventually the biggest airliners be fuelled by hydrogen? Is that a possibility or are there technical barriers in the way to that?

Val Miftakhov: No, it is definitely a possibility. When I started the company and we started looking at the technology basis for conversion of the entire industry to zero emission with hydrogen and specifically hydrogen electric - hydrogen fuel cell based - because there are no physical reasons, physics or chemistry, science-based reasons that the largest aircraft cannot be transitioned to that. Right. So we can do it. Hydrogen is a very light fuel. So it's actually on a per mass basis, per kilogram of fuel. It contains three times more energy than jet fuel. So your fuel system can be made lighter than the current systems that fly the aircraft. So it is actually better fuel for aviation than kerosene even.

And then with fuel cell based propulsion, you can use that fuel up to two times more efficiently because you don't combust. So your efficiency is higher. So it becomes even better, and with zero emission. So fundamentally, hydrogen electric approach is much better than a kerosene-based approach. We just need to do the required amount of engineering to get to that level of power.

But there are no scientific barriers, so we don't need new science in order to get there. We need to constantly improve the systems and increase the temperature and pressure and the fuel cell chamber scores of our system, which we are well on track for that in 15, 20 years, I think we can cover all sizes of aircraft.

Robin Pomeroy: What other obstacles are there to rolling this out? Is there demand yet from aircraft manufacturers or from airline operators? Are there regulatory barriers? Are there financial barriers? Are people willing to invest in this at this relatively early stage?

Val Miftakhov: Yeah, it's a great question. And I think if I have to prioritise all the challenges and barriers, I think regulatory barrier is the is the biggest one because we by now we have shown that there is a great interest and demand from the flying public, from the airlines, and most recently also shown that there is a huge demand from the aircraft manufacturers and the airports. So the company ZeroAvia was able to energize this whole ecosystem around us and we got over 1,500 engines on pre-order now from American Airlines United, British Airways, Alaska Airlines and a number of other blue chip names and smaller airlines as well.

Robin Pomeroy: Why do you think they are so interested in this product then? What are they getting out of it?

Val Miftakhov: Well, because the flying public is already demanding clean air travel, starting from 2018, 2019. I think things start in Sweden, right? Flight shaming movements and people started realising how much footprint flying brings. So you have these all these calculators all over the place and you punch in your numbers and as soon as you plug in even one family vacation somewhere far, that's your footprint for the year. So a lot of education happened that people realise now that flying is really, really intensive on energy and on air pollution.

And also now people also realise that more and more that carbon part is only a part of the equation. But actually the actual impact on climate from aviation is about two-thirds non carbon because we're combusting fuel at high altitude. So those footprints become even larger. So a flying public demands it.

And then airlines themselves see that the government is starting to react to people's demands and putting curbs on the on flying. In some countries like France, for example, Air France is already banned flying regional flights on routes where there is a rail, high speed rail connection. And that's just the beginning. So airlines see that. Fast forward five, ten years, you're going to have this type of regulation all over the place that really curbs your ability to grow and hurts your business. So they're now seeing the writing on the wall and they want to start adopting zero emission solutions so they don't get restricted. So it's actually a business reason for it, which is great because that's how we're going to scale it. There has to be a business reason for it. It's not just for, you know, feeling good, right? Because scale transition only happens when you have economic reason for it. And that's encouraging.

Robin Pomeroy: There are other options for zero emissions aviation that people talk about, synthetic fuels which can be used in existing engines as well. Presumably that's your is that your big competitor in the future? Where do you see your product as related to those other potential options?

Val Miftakhov: Yes, great question. We've looked at all of those back, you know, five, four or five years ago when I started the company, we started looking at this.

So synthetic aviation fuels, of course, are interesting for the medium term solution where we don't have yet large engines for large aeroplanes. That's the only solution we can have.

But it is significantly more expensive to produce that fuel than just to produce hydrogen because you have to actually produce hydrogen first and then bind it to carbon in a large chemical plant or refinery like facility. And then you get liquid fuel and then you burn that fuel relatively inefficiently. So back to combustion engine versus fuel cell efficiency. Fuel cells utilise fuel more efficiently. So you need more fuel. You produce it less efficiently and you need more of it. So economically, it's fundamentally worse. And basically you're you're just shifting your infrastructure burden upstream because you need to build a lot of these processing plants in order to get the synthetic fuel.

But again, for large aircraft, until we have the engines, new engines, new novel propulsion engines, for that large aircraft, this is the only option. So this is a good medium term solution. And I sort of estimate between 30 and 50 years, sort of lifetime of that solution. But fundamentally, hydrogen electric approach is the best approach. So we think that's what will win over a long time.

So once we have the engines of those classes in operation and certified and the fleet starts turning over to those, that's where it will go.

Robin Pomeroy: So what was the genesis of this idea? You say you mulled different possible technologies to develop and you chose this one. I mean, what happened? Was there a eureka moment. Why aviation? Tell us something about your background and why this idea occurred to you in the first place.

Val Miftakhov: Before ZeroAvia, I had a company called Electric MotorWerks. We were building smart charging solutions for electric cars, working since 2010-11 on zero emission transportation. So this this whole sort of zero emission climate change and impact of transport was already close to heart for me. And that company was acquired five years ago, and that's when I started ZeroAvia. A natural, you know, serial entrepreneur thing to do.

And as I was thinking about what comes next, my background came in. I'm a pilot myself for the last 20 years, non-commercially but as a private pilot, helicopters, aeroplanes - really passionate about aviation overall. My father was an avionics engineer, built electronics for aircraft back in Soviet Union, actually. And then I moved to the United States almost 30 years ago. But that sort of stuck with me, I guess, and hence the passion for aviation.

I wanted from the very beginning, maybe because of my previous company experience, where we built the world's largest network of smart charging stations for electric cars, I wanted to focus on the big problem, right. Focus on getting the entire industry, entire aviation industry, over to zero emission, not just a small segment of small aircraft with batteries, for example, or a new type of vehicles like VTOLs. I wanted to take commercial aviation to the new future.

Robin Pomeroy: VTOLs are the vertical takeoff and landing, drone-type thing.

Val Miftakhov: If you take that approach, then you quickly realise that almost the only way to do it is through hydrogen and the best way to do it through hydrogen is with hydrogen electric.

Robin Pomeroy: Val Miftakhov, CEO of ZeroAvia, which is a member of the the World Economic Forum's Technology Pioneers community of early to growth-stage companies that are developing innovations poised to have a significant impact on business and society. Find out more on our website.

Please subscribe to Radio Davos wherever you get your podcasts and please leave us a rating and a review. Check out our other podcasts: Meet the Leader, Book Club and Agenda Dialogues. Find them all at wef.ch/podcasts. And join the conversation on the World Economic Forum Podcast club - look for that on Facebook.

This episode of Radio Davos was written and presented by me, Robin Pomeroy. Studio production was by Gareth Nolan.

We will be back next week, but for now thanks to you for listening and goodbye.