4 sustainability takeaways from the Farnborough Airshow

The 2024 edition of the Farnborough International Airshow took place in the UK for five days at the end of July. The largest aviation gathering of the year saw over 70,000 attendees flocking to the airfield located just south-west of London. Amid a turbulent first half of the year for aviation decarbonization progress, with high-profile sustainable aviation fuels (SAF) start-ups going bust, some oil and gas majors pausing biorefinery developments, and a lull in SAF offtake agreements, the airshow managed to revive the enthusiasm for the net zero agenda with a number of announcements.

The newly elected UK government, represented by Prime Minister Keir Starmer and several other ministers, opened the event by confirming that the country’s proposed SAF mandate will go ahead. Moreover, King Charles in his speech confirmed that the UK will develop a “revenue certainty” mechanism in the coming months to help stabilize the revenue of prospective SAF plants.

Considering a new SAF plant takes several years to be built, legislation will now need to progress at full steam to ensure these measures enable the UK industry to produce a sufficient proportion of SAF to meet its world-leading ambition of having 10% sustainable fuels in the jet fuel mix by 2030.

The announcements generated plenty of enthusiasm within the local industry and the international community, which is now increasingly looking at UK policy for inspiration. The effectiveness of a mandate will rely on the availability of SAF globally, as well as on the penalties for non-compliance. Hence throughout the several sustainability panels during the airshow, industry experts advocated for policy synergies across regions and comprehensive incentives packages.

Ambitious government announcements were matched by equally significant actions from industry. World Economic Forum partner Airbus led the way with daily sustainability announcements, including a direct investment in LanzaJet – a company looking to produce SAF from agricultural residues and flue gases, with projects in the US, UK, Australia and other regions.

Airbus also signed a memorandum of collaboration with Airports Council International (ACI) World to scale low-carbon fuels and launched an investment consortium to accelerate the financing of SAF. Partnerships like these are key to spread the risk that investment in the most advanced SAF technologies can still bring across the value chain, and will complement ongoing collaborations and efforts, including the World Economic Forum’s Airports of Tomorrow initiative with ACI World.

Airbus’s flurry of announcements was not limited to SAF. A new partnership with aircraft lessor Avolon was announced to explore financing options for future hydrogen-powered aircraft. The aircraft leasing industry has grown massively in the last two decades, with over half of the planes flying today leased from one of these companies, instead of owned outright by airlines. As more airlines look to replace their ageing fleets, lessors can play an important role in promoting more efficient, more sustainable and ultimately zero-emission aircraft by taking advantage of their considerable buying power.

A study from the International Council on Clean Transportation published just before the airshow highlighted the need for all new aircraft after 2035 to be either zero-emission or be capable of running on 100% SAF if the sector wants to remain on track to achieving net zero. A number of companies at the airshow showed progress towards zero-emission propulsion, with RTX continuing work on fuel cell development, and new 50-seater hybrid concepts released by Brazilian manufacturer Embraer.

ZeroAvia secured orders for 22 hydrogen-electric engines to be retrofitted in the turboprop aircraft fleet of Ecojet, a new airline based in Edinburgh that aims to commence operations later this year. Yet this number is nowhere near the 260 conventional aircraft orders agreed to at Farnborough, or the 1,160 orders last year at the Paris Air Show. Based on current orders, hydrogen aircraft will likely remain a regional and thus comparatively smaller part of the industry until the introduction of longer-range hydrogen planes after 2035.

Speaking of longer-range, the A321XLR made its debut after receiving certification from EU regulators in June. The newest jets from Airbus and Boeing use engines with up to 30% more fuel efficiency compared with older jets. Airbus’s XLR or “extra long range” version pushes the efficiency even further by offering the opportunity to use a narrow body (a jet with a single aisle in between its seats) on long-haul routes that used to be the domain of larger and more fuel-hungry wide-body jets. Thus, replacing older, less fuel-efficient aircraft with newer models is an important intermediary step in the energy transition while novel propulsion aircraft take off.

Traditionally, airports are not in attendance at airshows. Nevertheless, they were in the spotlight this time: As discussed in our recent article, as the fuels aircraft use change, airports will likely need to adapt infrastructure and operations to accommodate net zero propulsion. Several trials are already looking into hydrogen supply, handling, refuelling and storage, with the latest industry collaboration at Gatwick Airport also announced at the airshow.

Lessons learned from trialling hydrogen in other sectors, for instance zero-emission buses in cities, highlight the risk of inefficient knowledge-sharing between trials, strengthening the need for wider industry collaborations. Importantly, there should also be consistency between refuelling processes and standards. Alignment between governments and civil aviation authorities is thus deemed essential if the right environment for new technology to thrive is to be enabled.

The Airports of Tomorrow events we convened at the airshow also dove deeper into the disruptions airports will face because of climate change – well exemplified by the previous Farnborough Airshow in 2022 when temperatures exceeded 40°C in London. Several steps for addressing climate resilience at airports are summarized in our previous article here. The need to foster circularity within the airport environment was also discussed, with special focus on data. In an increasingly connected world, effective collaboration and anonymized data-sharing between airlines and airports could be leveraged to foster sustainability and improve passenger experience, both during normal operations and at time of disruptions.

Despite these benefits, safeguards for the risks that a more interconnected and digital environment can pose – both in terms of over-reliance on technology as well as data security – should be enhanced by both airlines and airports. This need was perfectly illustrated by the global IT outage just before the airshow, which resulted in hundreds of thousands of flights cancelled globally and costs for airlines as high as hundreds of millions.

The recent announcement that Air New Zealand, widely acknowledged as one of the most progressive airlines when it comes to sustainability, will drop its 2030 carbon emissions reduction targets should be seen as a stark warning of the scale of the net zero aviation challenge. This highlights the need for the policies, partnerships and collaborations announced at Farnborough Airshow to be implemented quickly and for more knowledge to be shared across industry and between governments.

While overwhelmingly positive, the increasing number of sustainability initiatives and partnerships should avoid fragmentation and duplication, and look at greater integration to accelerate efficiencies. Ultimately, this will help foster net zero fuels, propulsion and infrastructure technology development and investment – a key priority for our Airports of Tomorrow initiative.