Political and economic turmoil has not dented Airbus’ commitment to decarbonizing aviation, according to the European aerospace and defense group’s chief sustainability officer, Julie Kitcher. Addressing the opening of this year’s Airbus Summit on Monday, she told journalists that the company and its partners are not discouraged by the apparent enormity of the task it will take for aviation to achieve net-zero carbon by 2050.

“In 2024, global temperatures exceeded 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, and yet [the case for] decarbonization is now being challenged [by some critics],” Kitcher said. “Climate change is both a financial and a business risk and so we are committed to the net zero goal. Our partners and also policymakers have made wide-ranging commitments, and with innovation, technology is on track to achieve progress towards these goals.”

Pointing to progress made more generally in delivering increased volumes of renewable energy, Kitcher said it is an increasingly low-cost solution that supports energy sovereignty and security, while also supporting investment and jobs. “Every year brings a new crisis, but at Airbus our conviction remains the same, and for a safe and united world, we need to innovate, inform, and inspire,” she concluded.

Airbus CEO Guillaume Faury repeatedly stressed that the company remains committed to bringing hydrogen-powered airliners into commercial service, despite its recent admission that it will not be able to meet the original 2035 target date of the ZeroE program it launched in 2020. In the wake of the conclusions drawn from the first phase of the work, he reiterated that it will take longer than expected to establish that hydrogen is sufficiently scalable to be viable, and refuted suggestions that work to this end has paused.

Avoiding a Concorde With Hydrogen

“We have learned a lot over five years, and we know that we can make a commercial airplane that works [with hydrogen], but we also learned that this airplane would not be good enough to compete with others, [so it could be] a sort of Concorde with hydrogen,” Faury commented. “The regulatory framework hasn’t developed yet and we don’t have the infrastructure at scale. So we came to the conclusion that we would be wrong to be right too early, [even though] we are convinced that hydrogen is the future for aviation but more work has to be done.”

During the Summit event in Toulouse, the Airbus Foundation announced a three-year partnership with the Solar Impulse Foundation to support the adoption of “scalable nature-based projects that address pressing global challenges.” The Solar Impulse team, led by chairman Bertrand Piccard, will invite communities and organizations to apply to gain access to some of Airbus’ aerospace capabilities. These could include using satellite data to assess climate change threats and helicopters for aerial inspection and verification missions.

The two foundations are opening applications for proposals from April 1. Projects selected will receive €10,000 (about $10,790) in seed funding and will have access to technical expertise.

Piccard is now leading the Climate Impulse project in its efforts to fly a hydrogen-powered aircraft nonstop around the world with zero emissions in 2028. The group has had some support from Airbus engineers to develop its twin-fuselage aircraft featuring a pair of large hydrogen tanks and a central cockpit.

Arguing that aviation needs to restart the degree of profound disruptive progress it achieved between the Wright Brothers’ first heavier-than-air flight and the first Boeing 707 jetliner, Piccard called for the industry to get beyond the “optimization” approach it has taken between 1960 and 2025. “It is clear that we have to start the disruption again, and sustainable aviation fuel is not disruption, it’s optimization that could be negative [in some respects],” he said.

According to Piccard, the Climate Impulse flight is intended to inspire the industry by demonstrating that technologies like hydrogen propulsion can achieve the required critical mass. He described scenarios in which hydrogen could someday support parabolic sub-orbital flights connecting Europe and Australia in two hours.

“My job will stop [with the Climate Impulse flight] in 2028, and then your job will start to make it happen on a commercial level,” Piccard told his Airbus hosts.

Politics Block Progress on Direct Routes

Piccard called for greater alignment between those who can drive the disruption, pointing to factors such as the insistence of national governments on collecting air traffic management fees rather than accelerating the adoption of more direct air routes that would burn less carbon. He also proposed a sense of perspective and an end to the scapegoating of aviation, pointing out that compared with estimates that air transport generates 2% to 3% of greenhouse gas emissions today, food waste is responsible for 6%, textiles 7%, and road traffic 30%.

“Today, [we could have a situation] where green activists in Europe meant that we won’t have any aviation here, but the rest of the world will continue without changing,” Piccard argued. “So what would be better than banning [flights] would be to force aviation to be cleaner.”