COO of Universal Hydrogen Addresses H2GP Students

This week Horizon Educational were delighted to host Arnaud Namer, COO of Universal Hydrogen, for a weekly ‘Tech Chat’ with H2GP students. These weekly Tech Chats form an important part of the H2GP program, supplementing the hands-on experience of building a hydrogen-powered car with industry-specific insights and knowledge.

Arnaud spoke about Universal Hydrogen’s ambition to make hydrogen-powered flight a reality within the decade. Hydrogen is increasingly seen as a future fuel for commercial aviation, being lighter than battery power, having an amazing energy-to-weight ratio, and being capable of fast refueling thanks to Universal Hydrogen modular concept. Universal Hydrogen are helping turbocharge this revolution, not only developing a hydrogen conversation kit for regional aircraft, but creating a global hydrogen distribution network that delivers green hydrogen to any commercial airport in the world, at a very competitive cost versus jet fuel.

“The cost of green hydrogen is significantly decreasing,” Arnaud told Horizon Educational students. “There's a huge amount of investment across the world on green hydrogen infrastructure.  These large investments significantly decrease the cost of producing the fuel, which means that you can have an aircraft that's flying with green hydrogen at the same cost per seat as with jet fuel in two to three years from now.”

Arnaud also shared insights into the next generation hydrogen transportation system Universal Hydrogen is developing, which will allow airports to easily access hydrogen fuel using existing infrastructure at low cost.

“We transport modules full of liquid hydrogen on existing intermodal freight network, meaning existing trucks, roads, rails, and boats. We drop these modules off at the airport, and then load them onto the aircraft with existing cargo equipment, plug them in, and the aircraft is ready to fly its mission,” says Arnaud. “This means that you don't need the airports to invest in heavy infrastructure or fueling infrastructure. If you would imagine fueling hydrogen as we're fueling jet fuel today into aircraft, you'd need trillions of dollars of investment in every airport at the same time to make it happen, which is not realistic. Our modular hydrogen approach is a way to work with the current infrastructure and make every airport hydrogen ready immediately.”