Removing carbon from our airport infrastructure and aviation can be done, but ultimately requires a rethink of aircraft design says Dr Arnold Gad-Briggs

UK airports consume a huge amount of energy, approximately 200 terawatt hours for the industry as a whole in 2019 according to research undertaken by EGB Engineering UK. This was pre-pandemic and at the height of what was then unrestricted flying. The challenge will be to remove of all of the carbon from the production of this energy.

An airport as conventionally designed is for aircraft to land and take off and the functions and facilities that are provided to them to allow that to happen, primarily involves the use of energy and aviation fuel.

Energy is needed in the form of electricity or natural gas to for heating or to fuel several smaller plants to provide electrical energy, heating and cooling. Aviation fuel is necessary for the aircraft to be able to take off.

For the aircraft to be powered and produce less emissions, we have to adopt innovative designs, whereby the fuel we use produces low emissions or produce no emissions at all. If we look at airport infrastructure, we know the electricity grid is being decarbonised, through the plug-in of wind farms and solar farms that support that provision of electricity.

Additionally, we’ve moved away significantly from coal-fired plants to more natural gas plants and we are reducing our use of natural gas to power the electricity grid by using more biomass plants whereby there are low carbon sources in those plants and it means we produce low emissions.

We also need to, as part of that process be able to capture the carbon and use it as part of producing other types of fuels, known as synthetic fuels, even hydrogen, or be able to sequester it, to store it in a safe way.

Then we'll look at the planes where typically emissions contribute to between two to three per cent of total emissions. To tackle that we need to use cleaner fuels, synthetic fuels that reduce the emissions we produce. The way these fuels are produced could mean we have to look at crops, bio crops produced to create biosynthetic fuels, which could be dropped in as part of normal operations and used by the aircraft.

This offers a low carbon solution, it's not zero carbon, but at least it offers a pathway to reducing emissions whilst we chase other more sophisticated and innovative solutions to reach net zero.

There are smaller aircraft currently being designed that are looking at hydrogen fuel cells. There are also UAVs in development which will be using a battery platform charged through the electrical infrastructure. These will all offer solutions for urban use (UAVs), in addition to short to medium haul (hydrogen fuel cell aircraft).

But when you look at medium haul to long range flights, batteries do not offer a solution for the long term and the energy capability of fuel cells are limited for extended long range. Whilst we could employ synthetic fuels as a drop-in solution, it won't get us to net-zero carbon. We need to look at fuels such like hydrogen that could offer a solution.

Ultimately, the requirements of long-distance flight could require us to rethink aircraft combustion systems and, perhaps, the way we design aircraft. It could be that a decarbonised aviation industry looks very different from what we have now. The question then is are we prepared to make the changes on the scale that is required?

Hear more on this topic by registering to watch the TN’s ‘Transition of Airport Infrastructure to Meet Net-Zero Operations’ Webinar on 29 June 2023 - 12.30hrs BST.  

• Dr Arnold Gad-Briggs is Chair of the Aerospace Technical Network & Head, Executive Director of EGB Engineering, a UK engineering consultancy that specialize in power and propulsion in numerous industries, including Aerospace.

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