Flying, sustainably

I started my career in the late 1990s. Tony Blair's premiership in the UK was in its honeymoon phase. The world's governments had just agreed the Kyoto Protocol. I was concerned about climate change - it was the issue that had most driven me to work in sustainability - but I was optimistic too. We had half a century to sort the issue and we were starting well.

I'm now feeling a real telescoping of the timescales. While long-term climate goals are still set for 2050, the IPCC has told us that we need a radical transformation now. But I’m still feeling optimistic. There's a palpable sense of acceleration on the agenda. A couple of examples stood out for me in the last couple of weeks. In the UK, the Chancellor's recent spring budget statement announced that new homes will need to be renewably heated within a few years. In China, the state investment corporation announced it would no longer invest in coal power. Those are the latest in a growing and powerful set of signals of system change.

In my own sector, I'm seeing that acceleration of interest, investment and development too, in sustainable flight. In October last year our Chief Executive, John Holland-Kaye, announced that Heathrow would offer free landing charges for a year for the first electric flight from the airport, a prize worth close to ￡1 million. I expect us to award that prize inside ten years. 

As an airport we’re not involved in operating a fleet of aircraft, but we do provide the infrastructure that allows that fleet to operate. The research and innovation requirements to prepare the airport for hybrid-electric, or other more sustainable propulsion technology, will be many and varied. Inevitably the goal posts will shift over time, but if we are to accelerate the arrival of sustainable flight, the innovation challenge begins right now.

One way we will embrace this journey is through our new Heathrow Centre of Excellence for Sustainability which sets out to become a hub of research and development in sustainable air travel. It recognises that: 

• the biggest challenges we face are industry-wide and economy-wide, and therefore we need a clear mechanism for collaboration;
• we need to seek and share the best ideas from our existing supply chain but also from beyond it, from universities, entreprenuers, members of local communities and, of course, from the knowledge and enthusiasm of the thousands of our own colleagues at Heathrow;
• transformative innovation will play a critical role.

For an airport, electric flight poses some big questions. We need to start exploring them so that our infrastructure supports the innovation we need, such as:

• What changes may be required to the design and future operation of airport buildings, stands, taxiways, runways?
• How will the noise impact on local communities differ?
• What volume of carbon emissions can be saved and how quickly?

Unpacking the sustainable air travel challenge

It's tempting to focus on the latest developments in new electric aircraft technology not least because, like most technological advances, there's a real buzz about something new and some visible investment too. But there are also system-wide questions we need help to answer as we don’t want to risk jumping to solutions and, in so doing, overlook the overall evolution of radically more sustainable travel.

Thinking holistically, a key question is how will the contribution that air travel makes to people’s lives evolve? How will consumer attitudes to flying evolve over time? Will a clean technology evolution adequately address changing social attitudes and concerns as well as the science? And, with rising carbon prices inevitable, what policies are needed to ensure that passengers are paying the carbon costs of their journey while also contributing to the goal of fair and equitable access to air travel for all. It is hard to reliably anticipate answers to these questions. However, we can start to explore what is an appropriate role for an airport in educating and engaging with consumers on climate change. What are the steps passengers can take individually or together with our support?

We also need to ask how the political context will develop as policymakers grapple with 1.5 degree scenarios. These require the global economy to shift to net negative emissions by the second half of the century, with the greatest return from the earliest action.What system optimisation opportunities, like 'more electrical aircraft', are open to us in the immediate future? Who are the necessary collaborators and what innovative systems and processes need to be sought, tested and adopted?

Of course, people will be squarely at the heart of this transformation. What are the enabling skills required and are the educational systems in place to support it? Are we telling the right story about the exciting journey ahead to attract those in education to go on to join us in facilitating the era of sustainable air travel?

The list of course goes on and I’m keen to hear the views, stories and experiences of fellow professionals from across sectors on a similar journey.

Where next for Heathrow and its Centre of Excellence for Sustainability 

Airports can be the economic glue for a whole economy and we believe firmly in Heathrow’s track record there. Our programme is therefore being designed, in keeping with the Heathrow 2.0 vision for a ‘thriving sustainable economy’, to:

• Connect experts, from entrepreneurs to academics, to think radically about sustainable aviation
• Explore their ingenuity, by offering Heathrow as a living laboratory, testing and piloting ideas
• Activate change by moving from idea, to pilot, to prototyping to new technologies and solutions quickly and nimbly

More information about the Centre of Excellence and its 2019 innovation prize competition on the topic of net zero carbon air travel can be found on its webpages