Abacus | Zero-emission, guilt-free flights from Hong Kong to Da Nang may soon be possible

American aerospace start-up ZeroAvia, funded by British investors, is transforming the way aircraft for short-haul flights are powered; by using hydrogen.

Boeing seems sceptical, whereas Airbus believes it will fly, potentially creating a divergence in the duopoly’s short-haul strategy

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Published: 7:00am, 10 May 2021Updated: 7:00am, 10 May 2021

This November, Britain will host the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow, delayed by one year due to the coronavirus pandemic. On the docket will be discussion of aircraft emissions and the impact tourism has on the environment.

The upside of being grounded by the pandemic has been that for much of the past year, air pollution has been perceptibly lower. Though in recent months as economies such as China have picked up substantially, so has the level of dirty air. Certainly, at COP26, there will be a lot to talk about.

The political momentum is already building towards November with activists such as Greta Thunberg starting to surface again, ready for the event. To counter their inevitable criticism of slow environmental progress there has been a speedy move to bring forward climate targets around the globe, particularly now the Americans are back on track under President Joe Biden, reversing climate sceptic Donald Trump’s pull-out of the Paris Climate Accord and recently hosting a “streaming” climate summit.

Greta Thunberg: surfacing again. Photo: AFP

COP THAT

First up was British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, boldly bringing the UK’s climate target forward by about 15 years with a plan to cut carbon emissions by 78 per cent by 2035, which would put the country in a leading position. Importantly, the British government has announced that a new “climate law” will be extended to cover international aviation – possibly the last thing aircraft manufacturers wanted to hear. The Labour Party knocked it back, but let’s give BoJo the benefit of the doubt here as he had an ace up his sleeve.

For the average UK household, these tough new targets will mean a wider adoption of electric cars, more encouragement to walk or use a bicycle, better home insulation, lower meat and dairy consumption, and finally more renewable energy – the UK is already one of the leaders in wind power, which takes care of about a quarter of daily energy consumption. That all sounds good to me, as long as they don’t ban authentic sausages. But undoubtedly, flying will become more expensive, which is bad news for those cheap easyJet flights to the continent for less than you’d pay for a round of drinks in newly reopened UK pubs.

Now, as Johnson released his bold targets, Britain had just unveiled the world’s first commercial hydrogen-powered plane. The aircraft is not a strange spider’s web contraption of super-light materials covered in cling-film, but rather a perfectly standard Piper six-seat aircraft retrofitted with zero emission propulsion by a US start-up, ZeroAvia, developed with partners in the UK which include British Airways. This revelation somewhat took me aback. Only two weeks ago I had been convinced by friends in the industry that a hydrogen, or hybrid hydrogen-electric aircraft, would not be seen in our lifetime. And yet, there it is, flying out of Cranfield Airport in Bedfordshire.