Connected Places Catapult, the UK’s innovation accelerator for cities, transport, and place leadership, is pleased to confirm that The Department for Transport (DfT) has invested a further £1.2m of funding for the second phase of the Zero Emission Flight Infrastructure (ZEFI) programme. The programme focusses on helping to grow the market for hydrogen infrastructure to enable hydrogen aircraft operation at UK airports.
The ZEFI programme is aiming to provide key information to decision makers and investors about current market and technology maturity. This will enable them to make informed investment decisions for their specific airport operation requirements. The programme is also working with the British Standards Institution to convene the industry – from SMEs to large corporates – to co-develop standards around hydrogen operation infrastructure at airports.
Alongside this, the ZEFI programme will facilitate technology demonstrations to showcase emerging technologies supporting the use of hydrogen in aviation. Three demonstrations have been funded by the programme in 2022, each with specific objectives:
- To demonstrate that hydrogen safety is manageable
- To inform the design of future systems such that the most cost-effective design can be manufactured
- To share learnings of actual implementation of system architecture illustrated in ZEFI Blueprint document.
The programme is led by Connected Places Catapult and is partnering with a range of industry and academic organisations including: the British Standards Institution, Costain, Cranfield University, DNV, Filton Systems Engineering, Jacobs, KPMG, and Strathclyde University. Findings will be published in March 2023.
