Researchers chart path for investors to build a cleaner aviation industry

Cutting greenhouse gas emissions to near-zero needs new clean technologies and changes to how the world invests in them, especially industries like aviation where developing and adopting greener solutions is risky and expensive, finds a new study involving researchers from UCL.

The policy paper, published in Science, highlights how smarter investments can help cut emissions from one of the world's fastest-growing sources of climate pollution. It describes how a new tool, called the Aviation Sustainability Index (ASI) can help manage investment risk that could speed the shift towards cleaner air travel and other hard-to-decarbonize sectors.

Co-author, Professor Andreas Schäfer (UCL Air Transportation Systems Laboratory) said: "There needs to be transformation in the aviation sector and the Aviation Sustainability Index could help research managers to make that happen. This index would reward financiers for making investments that make a real difference to aviation's climate impact."

Lead author, Professor David G. Victor of the University of California, San Diego, said: "The aviation sector - a fast-growing source of greenhouse gases - illustrates the broader challenge of industrial decarbonization: too little investment in technologies that could yield the biggest climate benefits."

The new approach outlined in the article could help guide a coalition of research and development (R&D) programs alongside investors and airlines seeking to deploy new technologies to curb carbon emission from the aviation industry. The researchers pointed out that despite current challenges in global geopolitics and climate policies, there are still significant pools of capital that could be employed to take a risk on clean technology. However, what's needed is a framework to guide that capital to the riskiest but potentially most transformative investments.

The researchers added that while investors and research managers tend to focus on familiar, lower-risk projects like next-generation jet engines or recycled-fuel pathways, getting aviation and other hard-to-abate sectors to near-zero emissions means taking on bigger risks with technologies and new lines of business that will be highly disruptive to the existing industry. Investors and airlines need to find innovative ways to encourage and manage these disruptive investments.

In the article, the authors call for a more realistic framework to guide both research funding and private investment.

Their new Aviation Sustainability Index (ASI) is a quantitative method to assess how different technologies or investments could help decouple emissions from growth in air travel. The approach is designed to help investors distinguish between projects that only modestly improve efficiency and those that could significantly transform the sector's climate impact.

The authors note that while roughly $1 trillion (about £750 billion) is expected to be invested into aviation over the next decade, most of that money will simply make aircraft slightly more efficient. They argue that few investors have clear incentives to back the kind of breakthrough technologies - such as hydrogen propulsion, advanced aircraft designs, or large-scale sustainable liquid fuels - that could substantially reduce emissions.

Professor Victor added: "Cleaner flight is possible, but it requires changing how we think about both risk and return. We need new institutions, incentives, and partnerships that reward innovation, not just incrementalism."

The commentary, written by a multinational team of scholars, also highlights a broader lesson for climate policy: global decarbonization goals such as "net zero by 2050" sound bold and ambitious. But when it becomes clear that they can't be met these goals make it harder to focus on the practical steps needed today to drive change in real-world markets.

The researchers urged for action that begins now. By developing bet...