Not exactly a passenger jet -- FlyH2 Concept Aircraft Powered by Hydrogen and Electric Batteries

A new report lays out the challenges of reducing greenhouse gas emissions from the airplane and boat transportation sectors. Those sectors make up about 3% of all global greenhouse gas emissions right now*, but their contribution could increase by 10 times by 2050.   Recent moves by the airline industry to study biofuels and even hydrogen-powered airplanes might mitigate carbon pollution, however. From Science Insider:

“. . . . projections spelled out in a new report reviewing the issue by the Pew Center on Global Climate Change suggests that by 2050 the total amount of carbon pollution from these sources could increase tenfold, depending on population, economics, and technology trends. Were that to happen, emissions would be as high as the entire transportation sector, which takes up 14% of global greenhouse emissions, currently dominated by pollution from cars and trucks. “It’s startling what the potential for growth in this field is,” says report co-author David Greene of Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee.”

A number of trends suggest that the industry may be able to forge a more sustainable future. When Greene began analyzing emissions from the aviation sector in the 1980s, “the consensus was there really wasn’t a role for biofuels in aircraft—let alone hydrogen,” he says. But as the report lays out, the industry has begun looking into both alternatives to jet fuel. “They see the way that the industry is moving.” Last October, the International Air Transport Association set up a target of improving its fuel efficiency by 1.5% a year through 2020, which is a “fairly aggressive” goal, Greene says.”

There are experimental hydrogen planes being developed in South Africa.  One is pictured above and more info is on their website, FlyH2 Aerospace.  There is a slideshow link there and notice who is making the hydrogen fuel cells — Horizon Fuel Cells of China.

The early hydrogen cells don’t look very sophisticated, to say the least.  It’s hard to picture a fuel cell powering a passenger jet with more than 50 people aboard, but it’s early in their development.   A fuel cell plane first flew in July 2009 in Hamburg and Boeing was testing hydrogen fuel cell planes in 2008 but it’s not clear if they are still testing these planes.

*Three percent doesn’t seem like enough to me, given the enormous numbers of flights per day just over the U.S  alone.   According to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, the latest data is from October 2009 and it reported 784,200 scheduled domestic and international flights, which is  down 4.5 percent from the number of flights operated in October 2008! . . . .  The number of domestic flights decreased 4.5 percent in October from a year earlier while international flights were down 4.4 percent.   That’s a lot of jet fuel.

And according to the Pew Center report, the U.S. numbers alone are a [...]