Cambridge University has released a groundbreaking report outlining a five-year roadmap to help achieve net zero aviation by 2050.
Despite ambitious pledges from governments and industry, net zero aviation is set to be significantly off course by 2050.
The report, ‘Five Years to Chart a New Future for Aviation’, outlines four 2030 Sustainable Aviation Goals—specific, actionable steps that must be initiated immediately and completed within five years if the aviation sector is to be on track.
Actions needed to achieve net zero aviation goals
The 2030 goals for net zero aviation outlined in the report are:
- Accelerating the deployment of a global contrail avoidance system, which could reduce aviation’s climate impact by up to 40%. This would involve the immediate creation of experiments at the scale of whole airspace regions to learn in real environments.
- Implementing a new wave of policies aimed at unlocking system-wide efficiency gains across the existing aviation sector. This has the potential to halve fuel burn by 2050 by tapping into efficiency gains that individual companies can’t address.
- Reforming sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) policies to account for global biomass limits across all sectors while driving renewable electricity production. This would provide the market with the confidence needed to rapidly scale up SAF production and ensure its sustainability.
- Launching several moonshot technology demonstration programmes designed to rapidly assess the viability and scalability of transformative technologies, bringing forward the timeline for their deployment.
Professor Rob Miller, Director of Whittle Lab, explained: “Aviation stands at a pivotal moment, much like the automotive industry in the late 2000s.
“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, setting us on a path to achieve net zero aviation by 2050.”
Achievable goals to get back on track
The report stresses that if these actions are initiated immediately and completed within five years, net zero aviation by 2050 can be achieved.
Eliot Whittington, Executive Director at Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership said: “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.
“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.”
The report was developed by the Aviation Impact Accelerator (AIA), a project led by the University of Cambridge and hosted by the University’s Whittle Laboratory and the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL).
It will be presented to industry leaders at events hosted by the Sustainable Markets Initiative during New York Climate Week.
