Airbus’s Hydrogen Fantasy Crash Lands
2 hours ago Charles Rotter
For years, Airbus held a front-row seat in the theater of climate virtue signaling. With grand fanfare and a hefty €1.5 billion injection from French taxpayers during COVID-era bailouts, the European aerospace titan promised a hydrogen-powered, zero-emission aircraft by 2035. The project was christened as nothing less than “historic” by Airbus CEO Guillaume Faury. Now, like so many green-energy pipe dreams, that fantasy is unraveling fast.
According to The Wall Street Journal article by Benjamin Katz, Airbus is retreating from its hydrogen ambitions—cutting the project’s budget by 25%, reallocating staff, and initiating a new “development loop” after discovering, shockingly, that the laws of physics still apply to aviation .
Let’s step back to 2020. Flush with pandemic cash and climate fervor, Airbus unveiled concepts for three futuristic, hydrogen-powered aircraft, one of which was to fly 200 passengers over 2,000 nautical miles. As Faury boldly proclaimed, Airbus would lead “the most important transition this industry has ever seen.”
But as many of us skeptics warned, this was always a bet against thermodynamics, not a technological revolution. The project depended on storing liquid hydrogen at -423°F, modifying engines to burn it, and constructing a global hydrogen supply chain from scratch—because, of course, hydrogen doesn’t occur naturally in usable form.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2025/04/22/airbuss-hydrogen-fantasy-crash-lands/
