SENASA, with recognized national and international prestige in the aeronautical sector, is committed to the aviation environment, and its commitment is based on the conviction that environmental benefits are also a stimulus for innovation, productivity and competitiveness of the air sector. Therefore, SENASA has participated in the CORE-JetFuel project (Coordination of research and innovation of jet and other sustainable aviation fuels), a project started in 2013 with funding from the European Commission, seeking to provide information for the research strategy of the next few years in this area.

Below are the results obtained in the project from the work carried out by SENASA and its partners. SENASA is confident that these results can be useful for monitoring and promoting policies and actions that help SENASA and the sector achieve higher-level objectives.

Decarbonising the aviation sector will be crucial to achieve 2°C target of the Paris Climate Agreement from December 2015. At the same time reducing emissions it is very challenging for a sector combining continued anticipated growth in the next decades, very demanding technical fuel specifications which are applied globally, an aircraft fleet with a long lifetime requiring smooth transitions and a low customer willingness to pay more for alternative fuels.

CORE-JetFuel was aimed to set up a European network of excellence for alternative fuels in aviation to bring together technical expertise and provide an integrated approach to alternative aviation fuels including regulatory aspects, research, deployment and economics. One of the main objectives of the CORE-JetFuel project was to provide the European Commission with recommendations concerning its funding strategy with respect to R&I activities in the field of alternative aviation fuels. CORE-JetFuel provided essential decision and strategy elements to achieve the best returns from future research and innovation actions in the field of sustainable aviation fuels within the constraint of uncertainty inherent to the nature of science and innovation.

In order to achieve this objective, the CORE-JetFuel project conducted a twofold assessment along the entire value chain of alternative aviation fuels. On the one hand, the performance of selected renewable jet fuel production pathways was evaluated in terms of their environmental and social sustainability, the maturity of feedstock production and conversion, the overall production potential as well as their economic viability. On the other hand, the R&I project ‘landscape’ of renewable jet fuels was evaluated in order to highlight needs in research.

In addition, deployment and certification initiatives as well as policies and regulations addressing alternative aviation fuels at Member State, European and international level have been analysed with the objective of identifying the main barriers to renewable jet fuel production and deployment. The project’s assessment activities and derived recommendations were presented to and discussed with experts in the field on occasions of the numerous CORE-JetFuel workshops that took place over the entire project duration, thereby safeguarding transparent results and minimizing potentially biased recommendations as much as possible.

Based on the assessment work and the recommendations derived from it, the CORE-JetFuel Consortium developed a set of roadmaps that feature targets for all of the project’s thematic domains for the short-, medium-, and long-term. These targets refer to potential breakthroughs in research and development of the assessed renewable jet fuel value chains that have to be achieved in the Consortium’s view on the hand, and on the other hand, to deployment and approval targets as well as strategic policy milestones.

The CORE-JetFuel project provided the European Commission with a detailed overview of current R&D activities in the field of alternative aviation fuels and presented, where appropriate, recommendations with respect to future funding strategies. These recommendations are based on a holistic and traceable assessment conducted within the project.

CORE-JetFuel served as a European Center of excellence in the field of alternative jet fuels. As a central pillar supporting this activity, a vivid exchange with stakeholders from the political and industrial sphere, from academia and non-governmental organizations was established. The dialogue facilitated by CORE-JetFuel between the different players enabled building synergies and helped in bridging gaps between the parties involved. In addition, an international cooperation liaison with North American stakeholders was initiated, thereby generating intercontinental information exchange and cooperation possibilities.

The CORE-JetFuel project was coordinated by the Agency for Renewable Resources (FNR, Germany), with partners from Bauhaus Luftfahrt (BHL, Germany), Servicios y Estudios para la Navegación Aérea y la Seguridad Aeronáutica (SENASA Spain), WIP Renewable Energies (WIP, Germany), Airbus Group Innovation (AGI, France) and IFP Energies Nouvelles (IFPEN, France). The Coordination and Support Action was funded by the European Union under Grant agreement No. 605716 with a duration of three years, from September 2013 till August 2016.

For more information please contact FNR

CORDIS https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/108976_en.html

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