From left: University of Cambridge professor of engineering Steven Barrett moderates a panel comprised of Boeing CTO Todd Citron, Airbus CTO Sabine Klauke, GE Aerospace chief engineer Chris Lorence, Rolls-Royce group director engineering, technology and safety Simon Burr, RTX CTO Juan M. de Bedout and Safran EVP strategy and CTO Eric Dalbiès.
Chief technology officers (CTOs) at seven major manufacturers—Airbus, Boeing, Dassault, GE Aerospace, Rolls-Royce, RTX and Safran—jointly called for further research into the non-CO2 impacts of aviation.
During a panel discussion at Farnborough, executives from six of the companies shared their frustration about not having enough concrete information on non-CO2 impacts to feed into their product strategies.
The panel comprised Airbus CTO Sabine Klauke, Boeing CTO Todd Citron, GE Aerospace chief engineer Chris Lorence, Rolls-Royce group director engineering, technology and safety Simon Burr, RTX CTO Juan M. de Bedout and Safran EVP strategy and CTO Eric Dalbiès.
“We are in charge of technology at our respective companies. So, for us, it's instrumental to know the scientific truth, to be in a position to do our job. That is to find technological answers to scientific issues,” Dalbiès said.
“For some of these non-CO2 effects, frankly speaking, I’m not willing to try to find solutions, because maybe the solution I have in mind would have just adverse effects.”
Together with Dassault, the executives issued a joint statement, calling for further academic, government and industry research into contrails, nitrogen oxides (NOx), sulphur, aerosols and soot. They said this would be “critical” to understanding and reducing aviation’s non-CO2 effects.
The group acknowledged “multiple large-scale projects and research programs” that are already underway, such as FAA-ASCENT and CLEEN, SESAR projects such as CICONIA, Airbus-led ECLIF3 and VOLCAN, and the Boeing ecoDemonstrator Explorer projects.
“We will continue to engage academia, the global climate and weather modeling community, government research organizations and industry partners,” they said
However, they also pushed for further action. “We jointly call for increased research funding to develop the science needed to underpin technology choices, operational changes and policy decisions,” the seven companies said.
They also identified seven non-CO2 research priorities, which included gaining a better understanding of contrails physics; jet fuel properties; aerosol cloud interactions; the radiative impact and modeling of NOx; trade-offs between NOx, soot, contrails, CO2 and noise; forming common models for aviation’s overall climate impact; and the impact of mitigation on airspace use and airline operations.
This builds on an earlier declaration, made at the Paris 2023 Airshow, where the group highlighted the importance of the sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) supply ramp-up.
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