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.

Airbus soon discovered what everyone outside the climate policy echo chamber already knew: the technical challenges are monumental, and the economics are worse. Even their “conservative” redesign—a plane for just 100 passengers with half the range—couldn’t dodge the mass-to-energy problem. Hydrogen fuel cells proved too heavy, and their power output too weak for commercial viability.

So why did Airbus press ahead with something so clearly unfeasible?

For the same reason so many corporations have thrown themselves into ESG posturing: taxpayer money and regulatory appeasement. The French government made its pandemic bailout contingent on green promises, while EU policymakers continue pushing decarbonization regardless of engineering feasibility.

As the WSJ notes, Airbus’s hydrogen project helped it tap into a firehose of government funds and green finance. It also attracted engineers and burnished its ESG credentials, particularly in Greta-fied Europe where “flight-shaming” has become a secular penance.

In short, this wasn’t about innovation—it was about compliance and optics. Airbus cashed in on green virtue while buying time to keep real aircraft production humming.

‘We Don’t Think Hydrogen’s the Answer’

Perhaps the most telling contrast comes from Boeing, Airbus’s American rival. Then-CEO David Calhoun minced no words in 2022: “We don’t think hydrogen’s the answer.” Instead of wasting billions on green moonshots, Boeing focused on improving existing designs. That realism now looks prescient.

Even oil giants like BP and automakers like Porsche are walking back their green ambitions. BP is pivoting back to fossil fuels, and Porsche is doubling down on combustion engines. Airbus, meanwhile, has been forced into a rebranding retreat, swapping hype for “development loops” and comparing its hydrogen plane to the Concorde—another technological marvel undone by economics.

The unraveling of Airbus’s hydrogen fantasy underscores a hard truth that no amount of EU regulation or climate activism can obscure: physics trumps policy, and engineering reality doesn’t care about carbon targets.

This is not an isolated incident. From offshore wind cost overruns to the collapse of EV startups and the continued flops of carbon capture projects, green technologies are consistently failing to deliver on their promises. Yet governments remain locked in ideological pursuit of Net Zero, heedless of cost, feasibility, or collateral damage.

As Faury himself conceded, being “right too early” is the wrong move. But the real problem isn’t being early—it’s being wrong altogether. The idea that hydrogen is the fuel of the future was always a marketing campaign disguised as a strategy.

Airbus’s retreat is not just a technical course correction. It’s a tale about the perils of politicizing engineering and treating speculative technologies as settled solutions. It shows, once again, that green policies too often chase headlines, not hard science, engineering, or economics.

The final tally? €1.7 billion gone, timelines extended by a decade, and the “historic moment” quietly shelved.

Hydrogen isn’t the future of aviation. It’s just another expensive detour in the long road of climate policy delusion.

Source:
Benjamin Katz, Airbus Promised a Green Aircraft. That Bet Is Now Unraveling, The Wall Street Journal, April 20, 2025. Archived version here.