When looking on the ClimateBase website, I noticed a company named Heart Aerospace listed there. The aviation company is located in California and Sweden and does a good job of explaining what it does immediately on its website’s homepage: electrifying regional air travel. Aviation is one of the primary contributors to climate change, so reducing its carbon footprint is imperative. Air pollution generated at airports can also harm human health.
Large passenger planes that only use electric motors and batteries may not be a great option currently because batteries tend to be heavy and don’t have excellent energy density for liftoff and flying long distances yet, including with an ample reserve. So, hybrid propulsion may prove more effective at least for the near term. In fact, Heart Aerospace is working on such a plane, the ES-30. CONTINUE READING