Aciturri commits with clean aviation in Europe

Twenty-three Aeronautics Industry leaders, Research Organisations and university Associations across Europe, including Aciturri, signed yesterday a Joint Declaration of European Aviation Research Stakeholders Related to Clean Aviation in Horizon Europe, to express their strong commitment to a future European partnership that can lead the way towards a deep decarbonisation of aviation by 2050.

The future partnership will pursue the development of concrete innovations and roadmaps -based on the progress made in the two previous Clean Sky programs (associated respectively with the FP7 framework programs and Horizon 2020) - for their implementation in a new breed of aircraft from 2030 and beyond.

The Signatory Organisations acknowledge in their joint declaration that the Paris Agreement goals with respect to limiting climate change will require a strong and urgent response from the aviation sector in terms of a reduction of its emissions contributing to global warming, in particular CO2. 

To do this, they commit to:

• Develop and foster a shared vision for the Partnership that recognises the scale and the urgency of the challenge of a deep decarbonisation of aviation, as well as of all emissions type significant reduction by 2050, while ensuring the safety, security, European leadership and competitiveness of the European aviation sector and the sustained societal value it provides;
• Commonly and collectively, together with the European Commission, work on the programming for the Partnership and to complete a technical roadmap by the end of 2019, building on technologies developed and matured under the previous Clean Sky partnership activities and other research initiatives to date, and expanding into new technology frontiers where needed;
• Support a Clean Aviation partnership with the most competent and committed partners within the current Clean Sky community and beyond in an open and competitive scheme on the basis of excellence; enabling the boundaries of technology to be expanded;
• Allocate the required efforts, in a balanced way, to achieve the goals to be set for the Partnership;
• Support the coordination with National and Regional Innovation programmes and other EU instruments to achieve important synergies and maximum efficiencies.

In parallel, the signatory organizations ask the European Commission, the European Parliament and the Council of the EU to:

• Ensure a timely finalisation and adoption of the regulatory framework for the Partnership with suitable lean and efficient operating principles
• Allocate and sustain ambitious funding in order to be able to develop, mature and demonstrate the required technologies needed to meet the challenges to be set, including adequate and suitable funding and mechanisms for exploratory upstream research.

The joint declaration was delivered at an event held at the International Air and Space Show (Paris Air Show) to Jean-Eric Paquet, General Director of Research and Innovation of the European Commission.

As Aciturri, collaboration in large-scale projects of research, development and innovation is one of our priorities, in order to contribute to the development of the global aviation industry and to reduce the environmental impact of our activity.

The commitment to this initiative consolidates our presence in this kind of European programs, after our participation in Clean Sky and Clean Sky 2, in which we assumed the role of "Core Partner" through the EWIRA consortium.