Aviation could achieve net-zero by 2050 with four immediate actions, say researchers

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by Deborah O'Donoghue

Deborah O’Donoghue is a British-Irish writer who has lived in the UK, France and Belgium. She has travelled all over the world and worked in car body repairs, in the best fish ‘n’ chip shop in Brighton, and been a gopher in a comedy club, as well as a teacher. She’s a past winner of the Commonwealth Broadcasting Association Short Story Prize. Her début novel, Sea of Bones, was published by Legend Press in 2019 and comes out in Germany in 2021. Follow Deborah on Twitter and Instagram.

24 September 2024

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The aviation industry could achieve net-zero by 2050 if it stops lurching between optimism and doom and takes rapid action in four key areas, a new report by Cambridge University says.

Five years to create a new future

For presentation at late September’s New York Climate Week, the researchers outlined a five-year roadmap to get aviation back on track to meet net-zero emissions targets. Over the next five years, the focus, they say, should be on contrails, efficiencies, accelerating SAF production, and “moonshot” technologies.

The findings come from the University’s Aviation Impact Accelerator project, hosted at the Whittle Laboratory and Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL). Noting that “Aviation is a major contributor to climate change, accounting for 2-3% of global CO₂emissions and 4% once the non-CO₂climate impacts are included,” the report says that the sector can achieve net zero by following its “Five Years to Chart a New Future for Aviation” recommendations.

The goals

These four 2030 Sustainable Aviation Goals are set out as specific, actionable steps that must be worked on straight away and completed within five years if the aviation sector is to be on track to achieve net-zero by 2050.

1. Operation Blue Skies

Work on contrail avoidance should begin in 2025 through the creation of Airspace-Scale Living Labs funded by governments and industry.

2. Systems Efficiency

Leaders should signal intentions to “drive systems-wide efficiency improvements” to industry and develop a policy environment that will “unlock” gains by 2030.

3. Truly Sustainable and Scalable Fuel

Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) policy needs a cross-sector approach, “enabling rapid scalability within global biomass limitations” and “beyond purely biomass-based methods” by 2030.

4. Moonshots

In 2025, launch research programmes to focus on and scale-up the most viable transformative technologies by 2030.

Aviation at “pivotal moment”

Goal 1 and Goal 4, anti contrail labs and transformative technology research, are seen by the Cambridge team as priorities for creating a positive tipping point in the sector. “Aviation stands at a pivotal moment, much like the automotive industry in the late 2000s. Back then, discussions centered around biofuels as the replacement for petrol and diesel — until Tesla revolutionized the future with electric vehicles. Our five-year plan is designed to accelerate this decision point in aviation, setting it on a path to achieve net-zero by 2050,” says Professor Rob Miller, Whittle Lab director.

And in tough words, CISL’s Executive Director said that aviation needs to stop lurching between “overly optimistic thinking” and “doom-laden cataloging of the sector’s environmental evils” and address the “major challenges to be navigated if we’re to achieve net zero flying at scale,” which he said “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.”