Airbus and Air New Zealand’s partnership on hydrogen-fueled aviation has entered a new phase by welcoming the country’s key “hydrogen ecosystem” players. The partnership aims to deploy a hydrogen hub in New Zealand, starting with Christchurch International Airport. The resulting consortium will pave the way to further act upon New Zealand’s—and the wider aviation industry’s—collective ambition towards decarbonization.
Ultimately, the partners will evaluate the means of deploying hydrogen hubs at airports, starting with the case study at Christchurch. If successful, commercial hydrogen-powered aviation could be extended to cover the entirety of New Zealand’s domestic network. The additional participants in the consortium include Christchurch International Airport, Fortescue Future Industries (FFI), Hiringa, and Fabrum.
With its large share of renewable energy sources in its energy mix, New Zealand is a model for a proactive, forward-looking ecosystem with a vast potential for low-carbon hydrogen production. To complement this, the consortium partners have a shared vision to support New Zealand to pioneer the commercial deployment of hydrogen-powered aircraft.
Fast-tracking adoption of hydrogen-powered flights
Overall, the collaboration will widen and affirm the consortium’s understanding of hydrogen-powered aircraft concepts and operations, hydrogen supply, hydrogen infrastructure, and fueling requirements at airports to support the development of this hydrogen aviation ecosystem in New Zealand. The work will also identify the pathways to viable and sustainable commercialization of hydrogen-powered aircraft technologies in New Zealand and the accompanying regulatory framework.
As for their shared vision, the partners in the consortium contribute their extensive know-how, thanks to the independent strides they have each made towards the prospect of a decarbonized, hydrogen-based aviation industry.
Air New Zealand is actively investigating the role of low-emission aircraft technologies to support the decarbonization of its network; Christchurch International Airport (CIAL) has reduced airport emissions by 90% since 2016 and is mentoring airports globally on how to decarbonize their operations; Hiringa Energy is focusing on the commercial development and operation of hydrogen production, storage, distribution, and supply infrastructure; FFI (Fortescue Future Industries) is promoting the use of hydrogen and ammonia produced from 100% renewable energy sources, and; Fabrum, a global leader in the design and manufacture of complete ground infrastructure for hydrogen production, liquefaction, storage, fuel transfer, on-board flight fuel systems and architecture, motors, and certification support.
“New Zealand is a perfect aviation network, in terms of traffic, flight distances, and airport network, for deploying regional to medium-haul hydrogen aircraft, to be developed within Airbus’ ZEROe project. This is fully in line with the ZEROe strategy to first study and deploy hydrogen aviation ecosystems in the most suitable parts of the world. New Zealand has a great potential for hydrogen production from renewable electricity sources,” said Karine Guenan, vice president of ZEROe Ecosystem at Airbus.
“The consortium is built with a great synergy in the respective partners’ expertise, combining airline, airport, hydrogen technology providers, hydrogen facilities developers, and hydrogen aircraft and airframe developers. This unique combination of skills in the end-to-end hydrogen value chain promises very high learnings and a successful study and roadmap for aviation and non-aviation hydrogen usage at airports,” Guenan added.
Airbus’ contribution
On the technical side, Airbus will contribute the learnings from its “ZEROe” hydrogen aircraft features and concept of operations for in-flight and on-ground operations. It will also make available its own researched assumptions into liquid-hydrogen needs in future hydrogen aircraft deployments. Moreover, benefitting from its global role as an aircraft manufacturer and integrator, Airbus will bring on board its experience and learnings on developing and studying “Hydrogen Hubs at Airports” from similar case studies ongoing in other parts of the world.
Indeed, Airbus has been an early leading advocate for hydrogen, identifying it as the most promising option for decarbonizing commercial aviation and meeting the environmental challenge. Low-carbon hydrogen can be used directly on-board aircraft for propulsion through combustion in a turbine and onboard power generation through fuel cells or indirectly as a feedstock for synthetic aviation fuel (Power-to-Liquid, or PtL). Therefore, Airbus is ambitious to develop and put in service a new generation of commercial passenger transport aircraft using low-carbon hydrogen by 2035.
80% of NZ energy renewable
New Zealand presents a unique opportunity for new energy sources for several reasons: It has a high proportion of renewable energy, with over 80% of New Zealand’s electricity supplied from renewable energy sources, including hydropower, wind, and solar. The New Zealand economy is also highly reliant on short-haul domestic flights, with over 60% of flights connecting regional centers under 350 km in length. Both factors make New Zealand an ideal test environment for new energy sources, including hydrogen. (Story and photos courtesy of Airbus)