European Commission, Brussels
BREY Auditorium – Avenue d’Auderghem 45
Background
For over 25 years, successive European aviation Strategic Research and Innovation
Agendas set ambitious environmental and climate goals (i.e. ACARE Flightpath 20501
) and
the achievements are very good. However, only last year, in the latest edition of Europe’s
Vision for Sustainable Aviation by ACARE, the importance of all non-CO2 effects was
adequately recognised. The “Fly the Green Deal” came roughly at the same time as ICAO
Assembly, at its 41st Session, adopted Resolution A41-21 which set the long-term global
aspirational goal for international aviation (LTAG) of net-zero CO2 emissions by 2050, in
support of the Paris Agreement’s temperature goal.
Yet, for over 25 years, the European Commission together with Member States have
invested heavily on atmospheric science as well as aviation research and technologies on
“Aviation, Aerosols, Contrails and Cirrus Clouds”. That was the name of the
European Workshop that took place in Seeheim near Frankfurt, in 2000 (July 10-12). That
was the result of another European workshop in Seeheim in July 1998, which was tasked
to review the draft of the IPCC Special Report on Aviation “Aviation and the Global
Atmosphere” (1999). Since then, more than 40 EU-funded research projects, many
European workshops on Aviation, Atmosphere and Climate (AAC), the successful actions
of the Network of Excellence ECATS and in-flight measurements have followed.