The fuel of the future is already here: Airbus has already drawn the road map to fly its hydrogen plane in the next 10 years

A plane emits about 285 grams of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere per passenger kilometer.

According to the calculator of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), in a single journey between Madrid and Barcelona in economy class, this means just over 60 kilos of carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere.

A single flight between London and New York emits about 670,000 kilos, or 0.67 tons, 11% of what a person emits in the United Kingdom and almost all of what a person in Ghana emits after one year , explains the BBC.

The English newspaper also cites data from the International Air Transport Association to give another piece of information that keeps the sector awake: aviation accounts for 2% of carbon dioxide emissions per year on the planet.

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For this reason, many companies in the sector have been working for a long time to try to develop technologies that help reduce emissions or even eliminate them.

Among them, Airbus has stood out for a long time, which is advancing steadily in its project to put a zero-emission hydrogen plane into the air in about 10 years.

This is a noticeably faster rate of introduction of this technology than was forecast last June by Airbus' rival, Boeing, which in fact still maintains particularly old and noisy aircraft among its fleet.

David Calhoun, president of the company, said then that hydrogen planes will not be generalized until at least 2050, according to the portal Actualidad Aeroespacial.

This week, Airbus has informed in a statement of its roadmap for the coming years so that the ZEROE, the name given to this aircraft, sees the light.

This includes, to begin with, the deployment of a hydrogen distribution station at the Lyon-Saint Exupéry airport (France) from 2023.

This, the company explains, will supply the ground vehicles of the airport (buses, trucks and handling equipment, among others), those of its associated companies and the heavy vehicles that circulate through the airport.

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It's just a first step. The company attaches great importance to this first phase of its strategy, which will serve to test the airport's facilities and dynamics as a hydrogen center in its area of ​​reach.

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Between 2023 and 2030, Airbus will accompany these stations in the creation of the liquid hydrogen infrastructure necessary to supply this gas in the tanks of future aircraft.

Beyond 2030, the airport will have a hydrogen structure that will allow the mass production and distribution of liquid hydrogen at the airport.

While this pilot test is taking place in France, Airbus, the manufacturer of the ZEROE, Air Liquide, the hydrogen supplier, and VINCI Airports, the company that manages the airport, will analyze the possibilities of exporting the model to other places in Europe.

"We don't need to change the laws of physics to bet on hydrogen. This has an energy density 3 times higher than that of kerosene. It is made for aviation", explained Guillaume Faury, CEO of Airbus, in a Statements collected by the Financial Times at an event on sustainability held in Toulouse.

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Faury has also warned that in order to get this technology up and running, the sector will need government and regulatory support, especially from 2027 and 2028, when the company will decide whether to bet definitively on hydrogen.

The entrepreneur is not alone in his mission to make aircraft sustainable.

In Spain, for example, as Business Insider reported, Skydweller, a company of American origin, is testing an airplane powered solely by solar energy at the Valdepeñas airport in Castilla-La Mancha.

This can allow these aircraft to stay in the air for months without refueling.

In Norway, Rolls-Royce and Tecnam are building an all-electric plane.

"At Airbus we have decided to take the bull by the horns," says Faury. "We have seen that engine manufacturers have significantly changed their views on hydrogen, which is very positive."

The technical challenges are numerous. Sabine Klauke, Airbus technical director, explained at this same event that the need to liquefy hydrogen and store it at 253 degrees Celsius below zero is an obvious obstacle that requires significant investment.

Experts point out, on the other hand, that the true reduction of the sector's carbon footprint will only occur if emissions from medium and long-haul flights are reduced.

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Alan Epstein, former industry executive and Professor of Aeronautics at MIT, told the FT that sustainable aviation fuels are the only practical solution to greening commercial aviation.

"The economic viability of hydrogen aircraft in the next 20 years is more influenced by national policy and regulations than by technical or financial reality. It is those regulations that will establish any economic foundation," he adds.

David Joffe of the UK Climate Change Committee, a government advisory body, for his part, is skeptical of the FT that hydrogen is the only possible answer.

"We need solutions sooner," he says, noting that the planes bought today "will still be running in 2050."