Startup ZeroAvia is located in California and produce hydrogen-electric engines for planes. These engines are created to cut down the emissions of CO2 and, subsequently, pollution. Moreover, their technology enables powertrain to decrease maintenance costs and fuel costs by 75% and as output to reduce costs of the flight by 50%. Company has already conducted first hydrogen-electric passenger flight on their aircraft Piper-M class in research lab in England. The plane performed all necessary elements such as take-off, landing and others. This successful test also made Piper-M class the biggest commercial hydrogen plane in the world by now. Founder and CEO of a company, Valery Miftakhov, says that 10 airlines are going to use technologies created by ZeroAvia. Furthermore, British Airways airline claimed that they are going to cooperate with ZeroAvia in order to explore possibilities to make British Airways company more environmentally friendly, sustainable and boost switch to hydrogen-powered planes. As they mentioned on their website “ZeroAvia recently completed the world’s first hydrogen fuel cell powered flight of a commercial-grade aircraft as it aims to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable aviation”. British Airways believe that technology of hydrogenelectric engines can become extremely important in the sustainable flights industry and will make it possible to avoid fossil fuels in this segment.
ZeroAvia claims that aviation brings over 12% of total transportation emissions and is going to exceed 1 gigaton of CO2 emissions this year. It also states that short flight (under 1000 miles) segment is the most dangerous in terms of carbon dioxide pollution and the company is going to solve this problem as fast as possible. The main mission of the company is to “Accelerate the World’s Transition to Sustainable Aviation”.
According to Bloomberg, company received foundation of 16,3 million dollars by British government for creation of a 19-seat plane with ability for a 500 miles flight and hydrogen-electric engine by 2023
Company also received 21,4 million dollars from Amazon Climate Pledge Fund (financed by Jeff Bezos), Breakthrough Energy Ventures (financed by Bill Gates), Ecosystem Integrity Fund, Shell Ventures, Horizons Ventures and Summa Equity.
Sources:
https://www.bloomberg.com/europe
https://www.zeroavia.com/
https://www.zeroavia.com/2020-summit
https://quote.rbc.ru/news/article/5fd9f0e39a79470cfa07cdf2
https://mediacentre.britishairways.com/news/12122020/british-airways-partners-with-zeroavia-to-speed-up-the-switch-to-hydrogen-powered-passenger-aircraft?ref=Home
It’s good to see the modern 0 emissions trend entering the aircraft industry. This particular startup looks really promising, especially from a long term perspective. Hope in the future we’ll see Pratt & Whitney and Rolls Royce manufacturing 0 emissions engines.