The team behind Climate Impulse wants to demonstrate the value of hydrogen as an alternative fuel for aviation, but with many design challenges to overcome and an entire industry to transform, the aircraft has a lot to prove.
The aviation industry is striving to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions. There is therefore a race to find alternative propulsion methods for air travel. Hydrogen appears to be taking a leading role in this.
To demonstrate the potential of this aircraft, a team in Les Sables-d’Olonne, France, is building a hydrogen-powered plane that will be the first to fly around the world. Its name is Climate Impulse.
The team is led by Swiss researcher Bertrand Piccard, who was part of the Solar Impulse team that flew around the world in a solar-powered plane between 2015 and 2016. He believes the project could be an important catalyst for the aviation industry.
“Many people say you can’t decarbonize aviation. Climate Impulse is my call against defeatism, against skepticism, against all the people who say there are no solutions,” Bertrand Piccard told CNBC Tech: The Edge. “There are many solutions, but hope only comes when we take action.”
Of course, switching to hydrogen-powered aviation is not as simple as simply switching fuels in aircraft. Among other things, the need to keep the liquid hydrogen close to absolute zero brings its own design challenges. So why did the Climate Impulse team choose hydrogen as the fuel for the project?
“If you want to be completely decarbonized, you can switch to solar power… but that’s not practical for commercial aviation,” Piccard explained. “When you have bigger planes, you need bigger batteries, and some of your energy is wasted by carrying the heavy batteries. So that’s the moment when it’s more efficient to switch to hydrogen.”
The team’s goal is for Climate Impulse to complete its round-the-world voyage in 2028 and for testing to begin in 2026.
Watch the video above for a behind-the-scenes look at the Climate Impulse project.