Battery-powered aircraft already exist - but so far they are tiny - and they can't handle any longer distances.

However, several major aviation manufacturers are involved in projects aimed at developing passenger planes that can handle distances of between 40 and 100 kilometers.

Some are completely battery powered, others are to be powered by a combination of electricity and liquid fuel.

"Explosion"

At Siemens in Germany, which manufactures electric motors for aircraft, he has seen a large increase in interest in recent years.

"There has been an explosion of projects since we started with aircraft engines in 2010. Then people said it would never work, but now we have shown that it is possible, purely technically," says Olaf Otta, marketing manager at Siemens e-Aircraft.

In one of the projects, Siemens collaborates with Airbus and Rolls Royce, with the goal of developing a hybrid aircraft capable of carrying 100 passengers 100 miles, which could be enough for many regional flights within Europe.

The idea is to fly a four-engine test aircraft next year, where one of the jet engines is replaced with an electric motor that gets its power from batteries and a fuel-powered gas turbine inside the fuselage.

Norway is investing

Several other companies, including Swedish Heart Aerospace, are aiming to build completely electric powered for fewer passengers and shorter distances.

This has been fixed in Norway, which is a country where many fly domestically.

Fjords and mountains allow a stretch of 20 minutes by air to take 4-5 hours by car, and the country has 45 airports that are close together.

"Our vision is that before 2040 all domestic traffic in Norway will be electrified," says Olav Mosvold Larsen, who is responsible for climate at the state-run airport company Avinor.

Is it reasonable to think?

- Yes, this is nothing we have found on our own, it is something we have from the aerospace industry. When Airbus, Boeing and Nasa, all the big talk about it, we mean we have ours in the dry.

If all domestic flights were made with electric planes, it could mean a lot for greenhouse gas emissions.

- About half of the emissions from Norwegian aviation are from domestic traffic, so in Norway we will be able to reduce emissions quite a lot, says Olav Mosvold Larsen.

At Siemens, it is expected that there may be electric powered planes in commercial use in 10 years, but there is still no real plan for how to replace today's jet engines for long flights.