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SUSTAINABLE FLYING

Potential for electric aircraft

Nature Sustainability volume 2, pages 88–89 (2019)Cite this article

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Commercial aircraft rely on liquid hydrocarbon fuels. Short-range all-electric aircraft have promise to reduce environmental impacts while remaining cost-competitive; however, they will require significant battery improvements.

Air travel is growing and bringing unprecedented benefits as well as significant challenges. In fact, global aviation demand is expected to grow by about 4.5% per year over the next two decades (refs. 1,2). This increased demand is leading to new routes, new airports, more planes and additional staff. Meanwhile, aircraft performance is only expected to improve around 2% or less3. All of these factors are likely to increase aviation CO2 emissions and escalate air quality and noise concerns. One promising research area to reduce aircraft emissions and noise impacts is battery-powered aircraft. A recent Analysis by Schäfer and co-workers in Nature Energy provides a first-order assessment of an all-electric aircraft’s ability to reduce overall environmental impacts4. They show great promise for all-electric regional jets with ranges up to 600 nautical miles to reduce negative environmental impacts, be cost-competitive, and deliver improved noise performance if substantially improved battery and electric motor technology are available. The cost competitiveness of an electric single-aisle plane versus a conventional plane is largely dependent on the cost of batteries and the relative costs of electricity versus jet fuel. Schäfer and co-authors found that having carbon taxes and batteries below US$100 per kWh would make electric aircraft economically advantageous.

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Fig. 1: The scaling challenge for all-electric aircraft.

References

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Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge S. Sripad for help with the graphics illustration.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mechanical Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA

    Venkatasubramanian Viswanathan

  2. Zunum Aero, Inc., Bothell Washington, USA

    B. Matthew Knapp

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  1. Venkatasubramanian Viswanathan
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  2. B. Matthew Knapp
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Correspondence to Venkatasubramanian Viswanathan.

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Competing interests

V.V. is a technical consultant and a member of Advisory Board at Zunum Aero, and owns stock options. He is a technical consultant and owns stock options at QuantumScape. He is a consultant for Pratt & Whitney. His research group receives funding from Airbus A3, QuantumScape and Zunum Aero. B.M.K. is the co-founder and Aero Chief Engineer at Zunum Aero.

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Viswanathan, V., Knapp, B.M. Potential for electric aircraft. Nat Sustain 2, 88–89 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-019-0233-2

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