Perhaps we are living in a new reality. One where the urgency of the climate crisis never appeared so clear, but where the financial and cost-of-living pressures mean a slackening off of policies that are so critical to address it.
Listen to some of the eminent scientists involved in the IPCC and their frustration on the myopic focus on net zero by 2050, and you can start to see how sharply this reality bites. By the middle of the century, today’s global leaders will be not be accountable custodians of the policy agenda they shepherded in in the mid-twenties.
That’s bad news. If we have any sliver of hope to keep global warming to 1.5 degrees centigrade, scientists calculate that we need to have halved emissions when compared to the Paris baseline by 2030. To keep it to 2°C, we’d need to reduce emissions by 25 percent. Many hard to abate sectors will struggle to make big savings by 2030, but the message of urgency and the need to make meaningful progress as soon as possible must not be lost. Making limited progress on climate impact while adding more cost doesn’t seem like the best answer, but roadmaps for aviation show solutions like Sustainable Aviation Fuels –a critical but limited and costly measure for reducing CO2 emissions over the next 10-20 years – doing most of the heavy lifting.
With investment and the right policies, we can expedite cleaner, cheaper alternatives to tackle the full climate warming impacts of aviation – including non-CO2 emissions. The sooner we can introduce truly clean flight technologies, the more we can preserve the precious volumes of SAF production for long-haul flights, removing all GHG emissions fully from small and medium range aircraft segments, and at least reducing the carbon impact of those most polluting larger, longer distance flights.
Frame a nationwide net zero aviation strategy that “should be aligned with economy-wide plans that states may have regarding a transition to a hydrogen economy… and to an increased supply of renewable energy infrastructure.”
The report suggests that this strategy must include a thorough assessment of how much each technology pathway could potentially provide to the country’s net zero aviation strategy. The UK Government’s Jet Zero Strategy and the Department for Transport have led the way here and have included a zero-emission domestic aviation target by 2040. Many Nordic nations go further with zero-emission domestic targets for 2030. Sweden has also committed to fossil-free international aviation by 2045.
“Goals not only serve as a benchmark for associated delivery plans; they can also help attract investors and spur industry action by reducing uncertainty,” says the WEF report. The WEF True Target Zero policy kit encourages “identifying key routes” as a key strategy “for governments that wish to become early adopters of new technologies.” This should also include a close look at how new technologies can reduce costs and emissions on Public Service Obligation (PSO) routes. The WEF toolkit also provides some good advice on considerations for establishing “green corridors” to accelerate adoption.
ZeroAvia is active in exploring potential zero-emission routes and when they will be practical – get in touch here to discuss if we can help with analysis.
The policy toolkit encourages a strong push on R&D support to advance zero-emission propulsion technologies and suggests that it is crucial to back new entrants as well as established industry majors. “New entrants,” it says, “are inclined to take greater risks to develop more long-term, disruptive solutions.” Moving at high-velocity while maintaining safety is certainly something that we have endeavoured to do at ZeroAvia, and with two world-first breakthrough flights in the space of two and a half years based on matched government funding, our work here is a good case study.
The ATI in the UK and Clean Aviation in the EU are the off-cited case studies for public-private R&D investment that can stimulate clean flight breakthroughs while also supporting jobs and growth. The Japanese government intends to invest ¥34 billion in hydrogen aviation, significantly raising the ante in APAC. The growth in such schemes in other geographies would create more global competition for companies like ZeroAvia, but something we should surely all welcome to keep up the pace of development.
Ensure tech neutrality, calculating benefit based on likely contribution to reducing aviation’s climate impact, and ensuring that it is a comprehensive metric that drives incentives, support and mandates. Both the EU and UK governments are looking much more closely at non-CO2 impacts, and the EU’s DG Clima plans a review that could see changes to the requirements in the EU ETS. This will become critical for policymakers across geographies lest a focus only on CO2 leads to a suboptimal or even overall negative climate impact.
In addition, further to building on the alignment with hydrogen strategies, the policy toolkit makes clear the importance of clean hydrogen subsidies. Clearly with the US investment in hydrogen production tax credits and its $8bn Hydrogen Hubs investment, the bar has been set high for subsidies to accelerate production of low carbon intensity hydrogen. A Contracts for Difference scheme in the UK is planned to help support the 10GW production target. What is critical is not just aligning aviation strategies to hydrogen strategies, but the other way round. Supporting the nascent aviation use case can have long-term reward in terms of stable demand, but it is not yet central enough to plans in many locales.
Investing in infrastructure is covered, with a neat tie to the True Target Zero WEF group’s work on quantifying the cost and challenges of building the infrastructure to support zero emission aviation. In addition, investing in regulatory sandboxes is recommended, something the UK has recently done with support for a hydrogen regulatory sandbox underneath the CAA. Ensuring resources are available for regulators to move at pace with innovators is also crucial. It goes beyond the safe certification of new propulsion systems and aircraft designs also. Regulations need to be reviewed to ensure no inadvertent bias against novel technologies. Currently, for example, formulas used by airports and navigation service providers to calculate landing and navigation fees are based on an aircraft’s maximum take-off weight (MTOW), and hydrogen powered aircraft will likely be heavier.
The report also identifies giving reductions or exemptions from existing passenger taxes as a vehicle for incentivising adoption of zero-emission flight technologies. The same approach could be taken with landing and navigation fees imposed on airlines by airports and air navigation services.
Ecolabelling can be a vital lever in increasing consumer awareness and stimulating demand for cleaner alternatives. We already hear from airline operators that a vocal segment of their customer base is thinking about restricting their own travel based on its climate impact. How powerful can these conscious consumers be in driving us all forward to cleaner flight?
You can read the policy toolkit in full here. We would like to give a big thank you to David Hyde and Alejandro de Quero at the World Economic Forum and Tim Johnson of the Aviation Environment Federation for producing this toolkit.
We have a policy playbook for delivering truly clean flight; now, let’s hope governments across the world can find the political headroom to put it into practice.
