The report, Five Years to Chart a New Future for Aviation, maps out the action that must be taken by 2030 for aviation to get on track for a sustainable future. These 2030 Sustainable Aviation Goals include the accelerated deployment of a global contrail avoidance system, reforming Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) policies, driving fuel-burn efficiency, and launching several moonshot programmes with potential to transform the sector.
According to the Cambridge team, some of these policies could have an impact relatively quickly, while others would take longer to bear fruit. Contrail avoidance systems, if successfully implemented, could reduce aviation’s climate impact by up to 40 per cent virtually overnight. Improvements in fuel-burn efficiency will inevitably be more incremental, with the report predicting a 50 per cent gain by 2050. Moonshot programmes, by their nature, take time, but could deliver huge benefits if they come to fruition.
It's claimed that if these actions kick off immediately and are completed within five years, the aviation sector can put itself on track for net-zero emissions by 2050. The report was developed by the Aviation Impact Accelerator (AIA) - a project led by Cambridge University, hosted by the University’s Whittle Laboratory and the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL).
“Aviation stands at a pivotal moment, much like the automotive industry in the late 2000s,” said Professor Rob Miller, director of the Whittle Lab. “Back then, discussions centred around biofuels as the replacement for petrol and diesel - until Tesla revolutionised the future with electric vehicles. Our five-year plan is designed to accelerate this decision point in aviation, setting it on a path to achieve net-zero by 2050.”
Aviation accounts for around 2.5 per cent of global emissions and but has driven approximately four per cent of human-driven warming of the Earth to date. While the sector’s efficiency is continuously improving, demand for flights is generally rising at the same time, as living standards improve around the world. Without decarbonisation, aviation could be one of the biggest CO2 emitting sectors by the middle of the century.
“Too often the discussions about how to achieve sustainable aviation lurch between overly optimistic thinking about current industry efforts and doom-laden cataloguing of the sector’s environmental evils,” said Eliot Whittington, executive director at the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership.
“The Aviation Impact Accelerator modelling has drawn on the best available evidence to show that there are major challenges to be navigated if we’re to achieve net zero flying at scale, but that it is possible. With focus and a step change in ambition from governments and business we can address the hurdles, unlock sustainable flying and in doing so build new industries and support wider economic change.”
Government urged to allow smaller batteries on to grid
Once again, it is meaningless to talk about a 1 MW battery (instantaneous power output) without also giving its storage capacity in MW-h i.e. how long...