In Brief

  • Challenge: 2050 Challenge
  • Challenge type: National Challenge Fund
  • Status: Active

The Challenge

Air travel connects the world efficiently, safely and quickly. Islands such as Ireland are in a unique position where there is no alternative to air travel in the context of European interconnectivity targets, and Ireland also a global player in the aviation industry. Aviation is faced with possibly the most difficult decarbonisation challenge of all sectors for 2050, in part because of the high energy densities needed for commercial flights (meaning electrification with batteries is not possible), but also because change is difficult in a high-value, safety critical industry. The aviation problem is a complex mix of immature new technologies, complicated supply chains and insufficient scientific direction for the enormous industry investments required. Ireland needs to take a leading role in sustainable aviation.

The Solution

A wide variety of stakeholders must engage in and invest heavily in the transition. By engaging with them, the proposed project will develop a techno-economic roadmap for making the first significant step towards zero-carbon aviation. This will combine validated physics-based models of various future zero-carbon aircraft with state-of-the-art fleet scheduling techniques to evaluate the feasibility of different aircraft concepts and fuels from technical and business perspectives, relying on real-world flight and operational data from our societal impact partners, Ryanair. These fleet-wide considerations will exploit the interdependency of aircraft design and mission scheduling to minimize climate impact and cost. Furthermore, the advanced modelling framework will enable characterisation of the ability to supply power-to-liquid sustainable aviation fuel (P2L SAF) and liquified green hydrogen (LH2) in the context of Ireland’s renewable energy plans.

By combining the technical work with an understanding of the whole sector, we will ensure that the project generates pragmatic, data driven solutions to the challenge of decarbonising aviation for Ireland

The Team

  • Team Lead: Dr Charles Stuart, Assistant Professor of Power and Propulsion Technologies, Trinity College Dublin.
  • Team Co-Lead: Dr Sinead Roden, Trinity College Dublin

Societal Impact Champion

  • Steven Fitzgerald, Ryanair DAC