Evaluation of Technological Innovations for Sustainable Aviation
Clean Sky 2 Technology Evaluator
Potential of Technological Innovations in European Aviation Research (Representative image)
The Clean Sky 2 Technology Evaluator is a key tool of the European research programme Clean Sky 2. It analyses new aircraft technologies and assesses their impacts on the environment, economy, and society. The results highlight pathways to a climate-compatible and competitive aviation industry.
The aviation industry faces the challenge of significantly improving its environmental footprint in order to meet the European climate targets. The development and implementation of new technologies play a central role in this. To ensure that these innovations are both ecologically and economically effective, solid evaluation methods are required.
Clean Sky 2 Technology Evaluator: A Tool for the Future of Aviation
The Clean Sky 2 Technology Evaluator (TE) is an innovative evaluation tool within the largest European aviation research programme, Clean Sky 2. The Clean Sky 2 programme pursues the vision of climate-compatible and quieter aviation, based on the goals of the European Flightpath 2050 strategy. The Technology Evaluator assesses the programme's results from a holistic perspective and ensures that these innovations not only reduce the climate impact of aviation but are also technically feasible, economically viable, and socially accepted.
Led by the Institute of Air Transport at the German Aerospace Center (DLR), this tool examines whether new aircraft technologies meet Clean Sky 2's goals of reducing CO2 and nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions, as well as noise, and what socio-economic benefits they offer. The aim is to improve the decision-making process for stakeholders in aviation, thereby paving the way for a climate-compatible future for air transport.
The Technology Evaluator is part of Clean Sky 2, a consortium of over 200 partners, including leading aviation companies, universities, and research institutions. DLR plays a key role in coordinating and analysing the results of the Technology Evaluator. The work of Clean Sky 2 continues in its successor programme, Clean Aviation.
How are Technological Innovations Evaluated?
The Technology Evaluator is a multidisciplinary analysis tool that assesses technologies by considering their interactions with the aviation system. The evaluation process is based on simulation-based analyses and modelling.
The results are analysed in terms of emissions, economic efficiency, societal effects, and technical feasibility. It also considers how the technology integrates into existing and future infrastructure requirements. The analysis considers the future growth of air traffic to predict the impacts and calculate the contribution of new technologies.
Data Integration: The Technology Evaluator relies on a broad data foundation that includes technical parameters, emissions values, economic indicators, and systemic interactions. Data is provided, among others, by aviation companies in the Clean Sky 2 consortium.
Simulation and Modelling: Advanced simulation methods are used to investigate the effects of new aircraft types with Clean Sky 2 technology, including mainliners, regional aircraft, business jets, rotorcraft, and small air transport. These models consider various scenarios, such as future regulatory standards, future market growth, and changed traffic flows. Modelling is done in real-world applications on multiple levels, from aircraft emissions and airport level to the system-wide level of the entire aviation system.
Mission/Vehicle Level: Comparison of Clean Sky 2 concept and reference aircraft for selected missions. The goal is to assess CO2, NOx, and noise reduction.
Airport Level: Investigation of the impacts on representative airports by 2050, including noise levels. A typical daily routine for the reference year 2014, without Clean Sky 2 aircraft technologies, is compared with future daily routines up to 2050 with a Clean Sky 2 fleet.
Global / Fleet Level (Aviation System): Scenario analyses, forecasts, and simulations to quantitatively assess the environmental impacts of fleet replacement and estimate the contribution of new technologies to ecology, economy, jobs, connectivity, and vehicle productivity. This investigates how an existing generation of aircraft behaves throughout its lifecycle and what happens when these are replaced with aircraft using Clean Sky 2 technologies. A reference fleet from 2014 is compared with a fleet using innovative technologies from the Clean Sky 2 research programme.
Long-Term Effects: The predicted increase in CO2 emissions in air traffic by 2050 could be limited from 43% to 23% through the introduction of the technological Clean Sky 2 innovations. In combination with other innovations, such as hydrogen propulsion and sustainable fuels, nearly climate-neutral aviation could be achieved in the long term.
Environmental Impact:
CO2 Reduction: By using Clean Sky 2 technologies, CO2 emissions per seat kilometre can be reduced by up to 32.5%, depending on the aircraft type.
NOx Reduction: Nitrogen oxide emissions can be reduced by up to 60%.
Noise Reduction: Improved technologies enable a reduction in noise pollution by up to 44% (measured in Averaged Perceived Sound Volume Reduction, EPNLdB).
Socio-Economic Effects: The European aviation industry could see an increase in employment and value creation by up to 40% by 2050 due to the corresponding technological progress.
Summary and Outlook
Clean Sky 2 Technology Evaluator – Evaluation of Technological Innovations for Sustainable Aviation
Future Perspectives for Climate-Compatible Aviation
With the development and use of the Technology Evaluator, the aviation industry now has a valuable tool to systematically assess technological innovations. This contributes to achieving the ambitious CO2 reduction goals in air transport and drives the sustainable transformation of the sector.
