The future of hydrogen-powered air travel, with Universal Hydrogen's Paul Eremenko

Paul Eremenko, co-founder and CEO of Universal Hydrogen, believes that there is a relatively simple way to solve the aviation industry’s carbon emissions problem. Today’s sustainable fuels aren’t really all that sustainable, he says, and electric planes, while great in theory, don’t scale. That leaves one obvious choice for Eremenko: green hydrogen. “There is a very significant sort of low-hanging fruit opportunity with no significant tech risk to put hydrogen in service and solve in one fell swoop half of aviation emissions problems by 2035,” Eremenko says.

Covered in this episode:

• [3:52] The aviation industry’s current carbon footprint
• [5:40] Why sustainable fuels aren’t really all that sustainable
• [7:12] Why electric planes aren’t feasible
• [8:27] Explaining the color spectrum of hydrogen
• [9:22] How hydrogen is safer than jet fuel
• [12:40] Technology for hydrogen fueled aviation
• [17:45] Why you can’t just fill up the existing fuel tanks with hydrogen
• [19:02] The “Nespresso pod of hydrogen”
• [21:23] Universal Hydrogen’s inaugural flight
• [23:20] How the range of a hydrogen craft compares to a regular jet-fuel plane
• [23:50] Major challenge is availability of green hydrogen
• [26:39] The economic competitiveness of hydrogen
• [27:31] A new commercial aircraft configuration
• [34:39] A few ways the aviation industry could look by 2045

For show notes and a full transcript, head to the episode page.

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