17/05/2022
Article
Study | 2022 Purchasing crisis & Recovery patterns
A combination of three factors is driving shortages and price increases across main industrial purchasing commodities.
Read moreHydrogen investments are growing: €9bn in Germany to accelerate hydrogen production by 2040, €1.5bn in France to build a hydrogen-powered prototype aircraft between 2026 and 2028, £12bn in the United Kingdom to build a 4GW wind farm for hydrogen production, etc.
To summarize, hydrogen is a trendy topic, especially in civil aviation, where the promise of decarbonized aviation in 2035 is catching everyone's attention. But what are the challenges to achieve this goal?
Redesigning and certifying the aircraft
A hydrogen-powered airplane requires a complete redesign: new fuselage, engine modifications, and integration of cylindrical tanks to store liquid hydrogen. Therefore, a new certification process is required that hasn’t been invented yet.
Balancing zero emissions, economic viability, and production capacity
There are 3 types of hydrogen, classified according to their method of production:
Which energy mix?
The production of hydrogen by electrolysis requires a significant amount of electricity. This calls for new production capacity, ideally renewable. To illustrate the scale of this challenge, we have simulated the number of wind turbines or EPR reactors that this overcapacity represents to supply two major airports:
To sum up, reconciling green hydrogen, economic viability and production capacity now seems utopian unless major advances are made in energy production.
Reinventing the supply chain
The goal of carbon-free aviation by 2035 raises another major challenge: 40,000 airports have to undergo a major infrastructure overhaul while maintaining double capacity for a transition period of 30 years.
Beyond this challenge, most energy players must review their position along the value chain. At this stage, Total and Air Liquide are positioning themselves on Hydrogen service stations for light vehicles. At the beginning of 2020, there are only 1,200 of them in the world, 18 years after the introduction of the first hydrogen-powered cars...