Estimation of potential hydrogen demand and CO2 mitigation in global passenger air transport by the year 2050

Abstract

Decarbonizing aviation is one of the biggest challenges for the industry in the upcoming years. The transition to sustainable aviation fuels, e.g., hydrocarbon drop-in fuels, is a strategy to achieve this goal in the short to medium term. Looking further into the future, the introduction of new aircraft solely powered by clean hydrogen could contribute to make air transport completely carbon-free, at least in the long term. In this paper, the authors estimate the potential demand for the new energy carrier for global scheduled passenger flights. The demand forecast for hydrogen is based on a traffic forecast at airport-pair level, and an aircraft fleet model that considers aircraft retirements and entry-into-service of new types. Based on the strong assumption of market entry of hydrogen aircraft starting by 2040, gradually replacing conventional aircraft and serving future passenger demand on all global routes of less than 1,500 nm, we estimate a global hydrogen demand of 19.2 million tons for passenger aviation in the year 2050. For flights departing European airports (including Switzerland, the UK, and EEA member states), the demand for hydrogen is estimated to be 3.3 million tons by 2050. To reveal the impact of the forecast assumptions, the authors present a sensitivity analysis with variations of parameters such as the maximum range of hydrogen aircraft, entry-into-service, and variations in traffic growth. The paper furthermore outlines the challenges for the aviation industry in the context of the introduction of hydrogen in future air transport.