Battery and Hydrogen-powered Aircraft

Baroness Boycott Excerpts

Thursday 30th November 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

The DfT has published a jet zero strategy setting out the Government’s approach to delivering net-zero UK aviation by 2050. The strategy anticipates that a range of measures, including sustainable aviation fuels, zero-emission flights, carbon market measures and greater efficiencies in aircraft, airports and airspace will be require in tandem to achieve net zero by 2050.

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

My Lords, does the Minister believe that the principle of the polluter pays should apply to aviation, as it does across much of government policy, so that the cost of the emissions trading scheme, as well as the guaranteed prices for producers of sustainable fuels and the cost of an SAF mandate, should be paid by the airlines and, in turn, by the consumers who take the flights? This will not make flights exorbitantly expensive; it will ensure that the people who benefit from such transport bear the costs of it.

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

I thank the noble Baroness for that question. In fairness to the airlines, a number of industry projects within the UK seek to bring hydrogen-propelled aircraft, for example, into commercial service. Airbus has its ZEROe project, through which it intends to bring into commercial service the world’s first zero-emission commercial aircraft by 2035. Launched in 2022, its ZEROe demonstrator project will explore how hydrogen propulsion technology can be configured, and there are many other projects within the industry.