[ aviation ]
SAF refuelling of Airbus A350-1000 . Image © Airbus SAS 2024
Sustainable aviation with green hydrogen
Sustainable aviation using green hydrogen as a fuel is in its infancy . The breadth of potential solutions is broad . The winning ideas may be known to us today or could yet emerge . However , the benefits of pursuing defossilisation in this sector will be felt in our lifetime and will leave a legacy that we can be proud of for generations to come .
By Stephen B . Harrison , sbh4 consulting
About 8 gigatonnes of CO 2 are emitted by the global transport sector each year . Almost half of that is from cars . Just over a quarter is from trucks , buses , and lorries . About one-eighth is from shipping , and another one-eighth is from aviation .
Putting aviation into the context of other transport modes shines the spotlight on battery electric vehicles ( BEVs ) and land-based hydrogen mobility . So , it is no surprise that these sectors have received so much attention in the past five years and BEV titans such as Tesla and BYG have emerged .
Taking another view , aviation CO 2 emissions are 1 billion tonnes per year , similar to the total annual CO 2 emissions from Germany or Canada .
34 Hydrogen Tech World | Issue 17 | August 2024