UPDATE - For some time now, European low-cost airline easyJet has been championing the development of net-zero aircraft. Initially, it supported full-electric, battery-powered aircraft but this has changed. Now, the carrier is fully behind hydrogen as the best solution to get aviation to net-zero emissions. AirInsight recently spoke to David Morgan, easyJet’s Director of Flight Operations, about the airline’s sustainability strategy. easyJet shifts net-zero strategy to hydrogen propulsion. First some background. In 2017/2018, easyJet announced a partnership with start-up Wright Electric to support the research and development of the full-electric, 186-seater, Wright 1. In 2019, the airline started collaborating with Airbus on hydrogen aircraft. EasyJet has also teamed up with Rolls-Royce on a two-year study on disruptive technologies to get to low-emission aircraft operations. It also collaborates with Cranfield Aerospace Solutions. And only last month, easyJet announced a partnership with GKN Aerospace on two hydrogen projects: the Swedish H2JET program on direct injection of liquid hydrogen in turbofans, and the UK-run H2GEAR that covers hydrogen fuel cell technology to generate electricity for electric motors. Over the years, easyJet has frequently shared updates about its involvement in and support for these programs. By some, this was seen as just PR-speak to promote a ‘green’ identity. So we wanted to know from David Morgan where easyJet really stands and how it is involved in these different technology programs. We started our chat about Wright Electric, which has been working on a 2MW electric engine that should start ground tests in the US this year and flight tests in 2023. David Morgan, Director of Flight Operations at easyJet. (World Hydrogen 2022) “When we started looking at this whole technology change for the future, we were looking at who is doing what on future technology. And Wright Electric, Jeff Engler, were a start-up that was looking at a battery-powered, commercial aircraft. It was in the days when Tesla cars were coming to the fore and we saw step changes in battery technology. There was an expectation from many people that this step change in battery technology would continue and we would see large commercial aircraft flying around electric. Our understanding of the evolving of science now, not just easyJet’s but generally, is such that this is very unlikely to happen. We won’t see a large commercial aircraft on batteries, because, unfortunately, the laws of physics are against us.” AirInsight – That’s what Glenn Llewellyn, Vice President of the Airbus ZEROe hydrogen program, said in September last year at the Airbus Summit: the development of battery technology isn’t going quick enough. David Morgan (DM) – “It may happen but if it does happen, you might have to wait another fifteen years for the development. We concluded that we will definitely see small aircraft using batteries. I can take my checkbook and buy a two-seater Pipistrel and fly electric for an hour. I think that will continue. There will be progress in battery technology, maybe even through to sub-regional range ten to fifteen seaters, who knows. But for all we know at this point of time, it’s not going to serve the short-haul, airline market, we have to be clear about that.” “So the reason that we are still partnering with Wright Electric is that the components they focus on as part of that research, things like high-powered electric motors at megawatt scale. Those motors may have a part in hydrogen, and fuel cell technology in the future. Indeed, when you look at the Airbus (ZEROe) concept aircraft, they are all given as hybrid aircraft, not hybrid with kerosene but hybrid with hydrogen. So you have got combustion technology, you have got fuel cell technology at the same time. So these high-powered electric motors may be used in a future ZEROe aircraft. People like Jeff Engler, who has great knowledge and funding even from NASA on developing these motors, some of that technology may end up in zero-emission aircraft of the future. So we support that kind of innovation, but we aren’t actually going to fly around in a battery-powered aircraft.” AirInsight – So you are supporting Wright Electric on their motors, but the chance that there will ever fly an easyJet Wright Electric airliner on batteries is unlikely. DM - “Very unlikely.” AirInsight – But what about the Heart Aerospace 19-seater project in Sweden. They can even stretch the airplane. Heart is ahead in its development. Is easyJet interested in this project? DM – “There are a number of start-ups for electric aircraft now. It would be very easy for us to start partnering with left, right, and center. What we like about Jeff is that he is very ambitious on large-scale aircraft. With the stuff he is developing, he has this in mind rather than limiting himself to a twenty or fifty-seater commercial aircraft. Our involvement with Wright Electric is really on pushing them with the technology, but it is not in the same way that we perhaps would consider hydrogen-combustion, hydrogen fuel cell.” According to David Morgan, it is very unlikely that there will ever be an easyJet Wright Electric. (easyJet) AirInsight – You didn’t communicate that very openly that a Wright Electric aircraft isn’t very realistic… DM – “I don’t want to be unfair to Wright Electric, because they have done incredibly well in terms of getting funding and doing their development. They are developing very powerful 2MW electric motors and inverters for high-performance altitude and ground-based applications. The inverters and motors could be either hydrogen or fuel-cell powered. But based on the latest technological knowledge, a battery-electric aircraft of an easyJet size is not realistic at this moment.” AirInsight – Let’s talk about Airbus then. EasyJet has is a partnership on hydrogen with Airbus, which goes back to 2019, so a year before Airbus unveiled the ZEROe hydrogen program. DM – “With E-Fan X (based on a British Aerospace BAe-146 platform - RS), which was the project with Cranfield University.” AirInsight - What is your input on the Airbus hydrogen project? DM – “We are one of the biggest Airbus customers, so we have had a very long relationship with them, even on the development of conventional aircraft. That’s nothing new for us. But in terms of the sustainability agenda and new technology, again, the same sort of time we were discussing in the early days with Jeff and Wright Electric, we were thinking: ‘What are the manufacturers doing?’ Airbus was more so involved than Boeing in future technology, so we are in discussions with Glenn Llewellyn and the team on the E-Fan X and what that meant for the demonstrator. We visited them in Cranfield and looked at the concept, but Airbus dropped that project and focused on ZEROe with hydrogen. It makes absolute sense to us because from our understanding of the technology and the energy density of hydrogen, we could see electric was really going to be a challenge for a narrowbody aircraft for us. So we were absolutely delighted when they announced the ZEROe program.” “In terms of what we are doing with them, we were the first sort of airline partner on the ZERO program. We have a series of workshops that have been going on since the beginning of the program. We meet up with them on a very regular basis, basically, every other week. The sort of thing we work with them on is what could an early network of zero-emission aircraft look like. For example, you are going to have a limited number of aircraft in the early days. You aren’t going to replace the fleet overnight. So how might that look, what might be the sort of airport network that perhaps could make commercial sense? It could be a London, Amsterdam, Paris kind of thing. And what can you do with that network? What are the payload and range you potentially could get from these early zero-emission aircraft? Would we be able to tanker the hydrogen from one place out and back rather than relying on everywhere to be connected with hydrogen, because that clearly isn’t going to happen. So a lot of detailed discussions on that on the operational side and even on the airport side. What do we need at an airport, what about the turnaround, what does it mean for the turnaround? How would that work around a conventional aircraft? What if we needed to move to a completely separate terminal.” AirInsight – Is that information that Airbus doesn’t have, they know so much about the aircraft? DM – “But they are not an airline, so they absolutely welcome and need the input from a real operator, an airline, to be able to work through some of these trade-offs. It is very easy to design something in the confines of a laboratory that doesn’t work in practice, because the utilization of the aircraft isn’t enough to make it viable. Even the speed at which the aircraft flies versus the trade-off between payload, range, and speed: would we prefer to be able to get more people in and fly less far, or do we want to get longer? These sorts of discussions are important. easyJet is closely involved with the Airbus ZEROe hydrogen project. David Morgan (second on the right) participated at the Airbus Summit in Toulouse in September 2021. (Airbus) AirInsight – But Air New Zealand and SAS are also involved in a partnership with Airbus. Is that exactly the same? DM – “Yes, very much so. Airbus is very conscious of not favoring one airline over another but it is fair to say we have been very involved right from the beginning. There is also a second element to the whole partnership with them in that we share the common objective of making this work as an infrastructure. So it’s not just about the aircraft. And if you’d ask Glenn and the Airbus team about what the biggest risk would be beyond developing the aircraft, it would be if we have a viable infrastructure in place to do all this.” “As an airline, even though we don’t manufacture aircraft, we don’t make fuel or hydrogen, we have this sort of unique, helicopter view of the whole ecosystem, because we are engaging with OEMs and engine manufacturers, fuel suppliers, regulators, so we got a very important role to play in developing this ecosystem, making sure that the direction, particularly the regulation side, is moving in the right way. If we just sat back and waited for 2035 to come, we might end up with an aircraft that is not suitable for what we need and we might end up with a whole ecosystem that is frankly not incentivized enough to make us go down that road. What we can’t have is a situation where someone has decided to do nothing, is better off than an airline who has chosen to go down this route of complete decarbonization.” AirInsight – This gives you an advantage? DM – “As an airline, I think it does, because if you are involved in a conversation right from the beginning, and that’s why people like myself are dashing around all over the place talking to different stakeholders because you have to be in the conversation to actually influence the conversation.” AirInsight – But that has happened before on the development of new aircraft designs. Can you influence Airbus and say ‘we think you should go for this first ZEROe model instead of that one?’ The turboprop versus the turbofan version? DM – “We will find out. We have been very clear that we require a narrowbody aircraft. We are not planning to change the business model so much that we would be flying around in smaller-gauge aircraft. We need to be convincing enough as an airline that we are serious about this. And let’s face it from a client perspective, that is the market. You aren’t going to make a huge impact from a climate-change perspective if you are only dealing with regional-level aircraft. Short-haul aircraft are accounting for more than fifty percent of European emissions, the sub-regional less than ten percent. So you really have got to target that market. We appreciate, of course, that there will be a period that they can walk before they can run, but we need that to be relatively quick because time is against us.” AirInsight – Is easyJet an airline that wants to be in the front position and one of the first to sign an order for such an aircraft? Lufthansa said it will likely be a launching customer, SAS has high ambitions. DM – “I have been in this business for quite a while and if you asked me if you want to be a launch customer for any airplane, I would say: ‘Definitely not.’ Because we have seen the history of teething problems with being a launch customer. But I think in this case, yes, we would want to be a launch customer because tine is against us. Having an airline like easyJet, a major size airline, showing an example of going down this road, will help bring others into the fold. There is a commercial element to it, but there is more. The progress, even in the last couple of years, has been quite amazing. The ambition in hydrogen is huge.” “When you look at aviation from the very short-range to the very long-range aircraft, clearly for our long-range colleagues, even hydrogen is going to be challenging. Sustainable aviation fuels (SAF) is, at least for the moment, going to be their fuel of choice, probably power-to-liquid e-fuels as biofuels might become less favorable and even less available over the decades. So you are going to have a lot of competition for very expensive, difficult to make, power-to-liquid fuels. For short-range aircraft like those of easyJet, you have got an area where hydrogen is a very credible fuel to be used for a 1.000-1.500 mile range. For us, it can actually be cheaper, more available, and, arguably, from a climate perspective it is better than power-to-liquid fuel.” A recent FlyZero study from the UK's ATI indicated that it might be a better idea to start developing a long-range hydrogen airliner first to iron out any teething issues. David Morgan thinks a medium-range airliner is more likely to be the first powered by hydrogen. (ATI) AirInsight – The recent UK FlyZero hydrogen study suggested that it might be better to develop the long-range hydrogen aircraft first… DM – “Interesting, wasn’t it?” AirInsight - … because the mid-size aircraft market is so big that it can’t permit any technology failures. DM – “We were quite surprised when that came out. I think the economics behind it would be quite challenging. The reason that we don’t fly around in A330neo’s for our operations is because the network, the market in Europe for short-haul is quite matured into a naturally, 200-seater kind range. 1.500 miles kind of footprint. Going for the mid-sized aircraft as FlyZero does would be interesting. What was great for us was that there is no barrier to a larger hydrogen aircraft in the Aerospace Technology Institute (ATI) FlyZero perspective.” AirInsight – Next project: you are involved with Rolls-Royce and Cranfield, but at which level? DM – “Cranfield Aerospace Solutions is almost on our doorstep in Luton. They are an organization that with project Fresson is looking at hydrogen fuel cells principally. They have a lot of work to start ground testing that aircraft early next year, and flight testing a year or so later. The reason why we partner with them is for them to understand an airline perspective, and the operational limitations, but also for us to be able to put a bit of weight behind their program in bringing hydrogen aviation to people’s awareness. And we are encouraging hydrogen development in any way.” “Again, it isn’t something we are expecting flying around in the nine-seater Britten-Norman Islander Fresson aircraft but we are encouraging that the technology that is needed to do will be developed. It is a small piece of the puzzle. Cranfield has a specialty in the safety regulation of hydrogen. They have their own airport. One of the biggest challenges coming up is the safety regulations of handling and using hydrogen near passengers in an aircraft. A lot of work can be done there long before an easyJet aircraft will arrive on the doorstep of an airport.” AirInsight – So your input is similar to yours to Airbus? DM – “Correct.” AirInsight – And Rolls-Royce? DM – “With Rolls-Royce, again, they have done a lot of work on hydrogen, both fuel-cell and hydrogen combustion. Clearly, we are an airline that is ambitious on hydrogen narrowbody aircraft, so there is a synergy to start with. It’s early days with Rolls-Royce, the announcement (about a two-year study) was relatively recent. We are working through a number of models. We are going to use some computer simulations for some of those scenarios in terms of payload, range, future projections on hydrogen costs, and availability. Using the size of Rolls-Royce, the firepower they have in terms of resources and technical knowledge will help our understanding of the network costs and availability. You will hear more about our partnership in the future.” Artist impression of the GKN Aerospace H2JET turbofan engine with direct hydrogen injection. (GKN Aerospace) New partnership with GKN Aerospace Morgan was in Rotterdam for the World Hydrogen 2022 forum, where industry specialists gathered to share ideas and views on hydrogen from a wider perspective. He also visited GKN Aerospace in Papendrecht. This comes fresh on the announcement in late April of another partnership a few weeks before, in which easyJet and GKN Aerospace will collaborate on hydrogen combustion and fuel-cell propulsion. AirInsight – Is this partnership comparable to the one with Wright Electric and focused on the motors? DM – “Yes, very much so. With GKN, we are more in the hydrogen fuel systems, the cryogenic systems. Initially, with H2GEAR on the fuel cell and with H2JET on the turbofans. One of the most difficult parts of the whole technology here, especially when talking about hydrogen combustion, isn’t so much the turbine engine but the cryogenic fuel system with fuel at -253 degrees Celsius that you have to warm up before it goes into the engine. That’s very different to a fuel system we have on an aircraft today.” “Having an airline as a partner is a useful thing for them but it is also useful for all of us in the ecosystem to collaborate and provide joint lobbying, if you like, advocacy for regulations, to make sure that the framework is in place that enables us to go through, in particular, the transition period. We might see some years and maybe even decades where the costs of these technologies otherwise would be a bit more expensive than doing nothing. We have got to make sure that the framework is in place and doesn’t disadvantage airlines like easyJet that are going through this." "With GKN and Rolls-Royce, we can work on common themes of getting the regulations in place. The more we start to understand this subject, the more we realize how important it is to engage with all the stakeholders in the ecosystem. I find myself having conversations with the likes of Alstet who make wind turbines. That would have been unthinkable in the past, but we need to understand what it means. How many wind turbines do you need to power a fleet of easyJet aircraft? Do you put them next to the airport, or do you have them offshore, bringing the green electricity in with an electrolyzer at the airport? All of these sorts of questions we need to start to understand. The questions are so big that we can’t afford to leave it too late and realize that we are five years behind where we need to be.” Until net-zero aircraft are available, easyJet will invest in more Airbus A320neo family aircraft. (Richard Schuurman) easyJet offsets carbon emissions since November 2019 Since November 2019, easyJet has started actively offsetting its carbon emissions through Verified Emission Reductions (VER) that meet Verified Carbon Standard (VCS) and Gold Standard accreditations. Until March 31, 2022, the airline had offset nearly 7.5 million tonnes of carbon emissions. But what about easyJet’s other commitments to sustainability? How much does the airline invest in all these partnerships? DM – “We made a commitment to offset the carbon from our flights. That is a big investment. The projects are not some kind of fictitious make-belief projects, they are all very credible Gold-standard projects like solar farms. In terms of investment in the net-zero roadmap with these partners, I think that over time, we may see more of that happening, but at the moment our investment is mainly in the time, the team involved in that, but it is likely that you will see further announcements on investments there.” On May 19, easyJet announced its updated Science-Based Target Initiative of a 35 percent reduction in carbon emissions in FY35 over the FY20 baseline. Since 2000, the carrier claims to have reduced emissions per passenger and per kilometer by 33 percent. AirInsight – You probably will only invest when you buy your first hydrogen airliner? DM – “Yes. One of the commitments we made at COP26 in Glasgow last November was to join the UN program Race to Zero. As part of that, we have needed to create a detailed net-zero roadmap that follows science-based targets criteria. That roadmap is currently with SBTI for validation and we expect to have this back within the coming months. It means that we have a very detailed breakdown by year of what we need to do to stay on a decarbonization pathway. It may be, as part of that, that there may be some investments required to stay on that but it is too early to say.” AirInsight – But that could also be an investment in newer aircraft to replace older ones? DM – “Yes, it is inevitable that we will need to in the shorter term still continue to do the fleet replacement as part of the decarbonization. The A320neo family aircraft are fifteen percent more fuel-efficient than its predecessor, so it is a no-brainer if you like. But there are also other elements within as well. Sustainable fuel, for example. We will use SAF at scale in the interim in order to achieve material lifecycle carbon emissions reductions in comparison to kerosene.” AirInsight – Is there a specific target? Ryanair wants to get to 34 percent SAF by 2050? DM – “At the moment, we have modeled or SAF demand according to the EU Fit for 55 mandate requirement. There are other elements within the roadmap that we will need to deliver on operational efficiencies, because there are always improvements you can make on your current operations, especially with the use of big data. Airspace modernization will also occupy a slice of that. Our big game-changer, of course, is when zero-emission aircraft kicks in, hopefully in the middle of the next decade. Then, we will see a dramatic reduction in our carbon footprint towards 2050." "We haven’t done an announcement on SAF. It is very easy to say that we will be flying ten percent SAF or something. We don’t even know the availability of SAF. At least, if you are following a mandate, hopefully, the fuel companies will follow. The reality is that airlines don’t buy SAF separately, you are buying your fuel from a fuel supplier. So SAF mandates are actually on the fuel supplier. SAF is an important part of our roadmap but our focus is absolutely on zero-emission aircraft. We will put in as much energy and time as we can on making that happen.”
