Electric and hydrogen propulsion will be at the centre of discussions on future sustainable fuels, said Joby Founder and CEO JoeBen Bevirt and Val Miftakhov, ZeroAvia’s founder and CEO, at the Sustainable Skies World Summit 2022.

This year’s Sustainable Skies World Summit takes place on 17 – 18 Apr 2023. SSWS returns to showcase and support industry’s efforts towards meeting its net zero commitment, now given further impetus by the adoption by world governments of an aspirational net zero goal for aviation at the ICAO Assembly in October.

Electric propulsion

Speaking last year, Bevirt said: “It was clear to me that electric propulsion could allow us to fundamentally transform the way we design aircraft. And that that’s been embodied in the ability to build aircraft that are relevant for people’s day to day lives. Making aircraft that can replace what are currently ground journeys in automobiles and trains. But we’re now at a point where electric propulsion can be used for a larger swath of aviation. And specifically, we’re using hydrogen as a fuel to run in fuel cells with hydrogen electric aircraft. This really fundamentally transforms the way we think about aircraft design.”

Miftakhov added: “You can drive the economics of the fuel down to even below the break even points with kerosene, especially given the efficiency premium that we have on the hydrogen, electric or hydrogen fuel cells. So we’re saying actually hydrogen infrastructure is a tractable problem in aviation and more tractable than in the ground transport.”

Watch the full session here