Fraunhofer AVIATION & SPACEIn line with the ambitious goals set out in the European Green Deal the European aeronautics community is committed to reach climate neutrality in 2050. Together with the European Union it has created an institutionalized European Partnership for Clean Aviation under Horizon Europe to pave the way to a safe, reliable, affordable, and clean air transport.
Clean Aviation will substanciate Europe’s leadership in innovation and technology, thus delivering jobs and economic growth throughout the transition to a climate-neutral Europe by 2050. It offers future generations the promise of continued, affordable, and equal access to air travel, with all of its social and economic benefits, and contributes to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.
With the aim to further improve the energy efficiency of future aircraft and massively reduce their emissions, the Clean Aviation program is pursuing three key thrusts:
Hybrid electric regional aircraft
Due to the shorter route lengths, regional aircraft can particularly benefit from new hybrid-electric propulsion technologies and energy architectures. Clean Aviation is therefore driving research and innovation in this area and promoting the maturation of new configurations, on-board energy concepts and flight control technologies.
Ultra-efficient short and short-medium range aircraft
The short and short-medium range needs are addressed with innovative aircraft architectures that utilize highly integrated, ultra-efficient thermal propulsion systems leveraging disruptive improvements in fuel efficiency. This will be essential for the transition to low/zero-emission energy sources (synthetic fuels, non-drop-in fuels such as hydrogen), which will be more energy intensive to produce, more expensive, and only available in limited quantities.
Disruptive technologies to enable hydrogen-powered aircraft
This pillar focuses on enabling aircraft and engines to exploit the potential of hydrogen as a non-drop-in alternative zero-carbon fuel, in particular liquid hydrogen. The projects will align technological capability and maturity, as well as the performance gains achievable with the performance requirements for the various aircraft categories.
In each of these thrusts new knowledge and skills are in focus. Innovative technologies and prerequisites are developed, further matured and validated and the implementation risks for the identified technologies and solutions are reduced. The targeted research and development efforts result in demonstrators that show what is possible and lay the foundation for industrial implementation.