̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - fuel

Solar-powered device captures carbon dioxide from air to make sustainable fuel

sc604 — Thu, 13 Feb 2025 10:00:00 +0000

̽��ֱ��researchers, from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, say their solar-powered reactor could be used to make fuel to power cars and planes, or the many chemicals and pharmaceuticals products we rely on. It could also be used to generate fuel in remote or off-grid locations.

Unlike most carbon capture technologies, the reactor developed by the Cambridge researchers does not require fossil-fuel-based power, or the transport and storage of carbon dioxide, but instead converts atmospheric CO2 into something useful using sunlight. ̽��ֱ��results are reported in the journal Nature Energy.

Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) has been touted as a possible solution to the climate crisis, and has recently received £22bn in funding from the UK government. However, CCS is energy-intensive and there are concerns about the long-term safety of storing pressurised CO2 deep underground, although safety studies are currently being carried out.

“Aside from the expense and the energy intensity, CCS provides an excuse to carry on burning fossil fuels, which is what caused the climate crisis in the first place,” said Professor Erwin Reisner, who led the research. “CCS is also a non-circular process, since the pressurised CO2 is, at best, stored underground indefinitely, where it’s of no use to anyone.”

“What if instead of pumping the carbon dioxide underground, we made something useful from it?” said first author Dr Sayan Kar from Cambridge’s Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry. “CO2 is a harmful greenhouse gas, but it can also be turned into useful chemicals without contributing to global warming.”

̽��ֱ��focus of Reisner’s research group is the development of devices that convert waste, water and air into practical fuels and chemicals. These devices take their inspiration from photosynthesis: the process by which plants convert sunlight into food. ̽��ֱ��devices don’t use any outside power: no cables, no batteries – all they need is the power of the sun.

̽��ֱ��team’s newest system takes CO2 directly from the air and converts it into syngas: a key intermediate in the production of many chemicals and pharmaceuticals. ̽��ֱ��researchers say their approach, which does not require any transportation or storage, is much easier to scale up than earlier solar-powered devices.

̽��ֱ��device, a solar-powered flow reactor, uses specialised filters to grab CO2 from the air at night, like how a sponge soaks up water. When the sun comes out, the sunlight heats up the captured CO2, absorbing infrared radiation and a semiconductor powder absorbs the ultraviolet radiation to start a chemical reaction that converts the captured CO2 into solar syngas. A mirror on the reactor concentrates the sunlight, making the process more efficient.

̽��ֱ��researchers are currently working on converting the solar syngas into liquid fuels, which could be used to power cars, planes and more – without adding more CO2 to the atmosphere.

“If we made these devices at scale, they could solve two problems at once: removing CO2 from the atmosphere and creating a clean alternative to fossil fuels,” said Kar. “CO2 is seen as a harmful waste product, but it is also an opportunity.”

̽��ֱ��researchers say that a particularly promising opportunity is in the chemical and pharmaceutical sector, where syngas can be converted into many of the products we rely on every day, without contributing to climate change. They are building a larger scale version of the reactor and hope to begin tests in the spring.

If scaled up, the researchers say their reactor could be used in a decentralised way, so that individuals could theoretically generate their own fuel, which would be useful in remote or off-grid locations.

“Instead of continuing to dig up and burn fossil fuels to produce the products we have come to rely on, we can get all the CO2 we need directly from the air and reuse it,” said Reisner. “We can build a circular, sustainable economy – if we have the political will to do it.”

̽��ֱ��technology is being commercialised with the support of Cambridge Enterprise, the ̽��ֱ��’s commercialisation arm. ̽��ֱ��research was supported in part by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), the European Research Council, the Royal Academy of Engineering, and the Cambridge Trust. Erwin Reisner is a Fellow of St John’s College, Cambridge.

Reference:
Sayan Kar et al. ‘Direct air capture of CO2 for solar fuels production in flow.’ Nature Energy (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s41560-025-01714-y

For more information on energy-related research in Cambridge, please visit the Energy IRC, which brings together Cambridge’s research knowledge and expertise, in collaboration with global partners, to create solutions for a sustainable and resilient energy landscape for generations to come.

Researchers have developed a reactor that pulls carbon dioxide directly from the air and converts it into sustainable fuel, using sunlight as the power source.

We can build a circular, sustainable economy – if we have the political will to do it

Erwin Reisner

Sayan Kar

Solar-powered flow reactor

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

Yes

Tiny copper ‘flowers’ bloom on artificial leaves for clean fuel production

sc604 — Mon, 03 Feb 2025 09:28:45 +0000

̽��ֱ��researchers, from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and the ̽��ֱ�� of California, Berkeley, developed a practical way to make hydrocarbons – molecules made of carbon and hydrogen – powered solely by the sun.

̽��ֱ��device they developed combines a light absorbing ‘leaf’ made from a high-efficiency solar cell material called perovskite, with a copper nanoflower catalyst, to convert carbon dioxide into useful molecules. Unlike most metal catalysts, which can only convert CO₂ into single-carbon molecules, the copper flowers enable the formation of more complex hydrocarbons with two carbon atoms, such as ethane and ethylene — key building blocks for liquid fuels, chemicals and plastics.

Almost all hydrocarbons currently stem from fossil fuels, but the method developed by the Cambridge-Berkeley team results in clean chemicals and fuels made from CO2, water and glycerol – a common organic compound – without any additional carbon emissions. ̽��ֱ��results are reported in the journal Nature Catalysis.

̽��ֱ��study builds on the team’s earlier work on artificial leaves, which take their inspiration from photosynthesis: the process by which plants convert sunlight into food. “We wanted to go beyond basic carbon dioxide reduction and produce more complex hydrocarbons, but that requires significantly more energy,” said Dr Virgil Andrei from Cambridge’s Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry, the study’s lead author.

Andrei, a Research Fellow of St John’s College, Cambridge, carried out the work as part of the Winton Cambridge-Kavli ENSI Exchange programme in the lab of Professor Peidong Yang at ̽��ֱ�� of California, Berkeley.

By coupling a perovskite light absorber with the copper nanoflower catalyst, the team was able to produce more complex hydrocarbons. To further improve efficiency and overcome the energy limits of splitting water, the team added silicon nanowire electrodes that can oxidise glycerol instead. This new platform produces hydrocarbons much more effectively — 200 times better than earlier systems for splitting water and carbon dioxide.

̽��ֱ��reaction not only boosts CO₂ reduction performance, but also produces high-value chemicals such as glycerate, lactate, and formate, which have applications in pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, and chemical synthesis.

“Glycerol is typically considered waste, but here it plays a crucial role in improving the reaction rate,” said Andrei. “This demonstrates we can apply our platform to a wide range of chemical processes beyond just waste conversion. By carefully designing the catalyst’s surface area, we can influence what products we generate, making the process more selective.”

While current CO₂-to-hydrocarbon selectivity remains around 10%, the researchers are optimistic about improving catalyst design to increase efficiency. ̽��ֱ��team envisions applying their platform to even more complex organic reactions, opening doors for innovation in sustainable chemical production. With continued improvements, this research could accelerate the transition to a circular, carbon-neutral economy.

“This project is an excellent example of how global research partnerships can lead to impactful scientific advancements,” said Andrei. “By combining expertise from Cambridge and Berkeley, we’ve developed a system that may reshape the way we produce fuels and valuable chemicals sustainably.”

̽��ֱ��research was supported in part by the Winton Programme for the Physics of Sustainability, St John’s College, the US Department of Energy, the European Research Council, and UK Research and Innovation (UKRI).

Reference:
Virgil Andrei et al. ‘Perovskite-driven solar C2 hydrocarbon synthesis from CO2.’ Nature Catalysis (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s41929-025-01292-y

Tiny copper ‘nano-flowers’ have been attached to an artificial leaf to produce clean fuels and chemicals that are the backbone of modern energy and manufacturing.

Virgil Andrei

Solar fuel generator

Yes

Trash into treasure: making clean fuel from waste and sunlight

sc604 — Wed, 09 Oct 2024 14:22:55 +0000

Professor Erwin Reisner and his team are developing prototype devices that convert waste, water and air into practical fuels and chemicals.

A simple ‘twist’ improves the engine of clean fuel generation

sc604 — Wed, 24 Apr 2024 14:31:37 +0000

̽��ֱ��researchers, led by the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, are developing low-cost light-harvesting semiconductors that power devices for converting water into clean hydrogen fuel, using just the power of the sun. These semiconducting materials, known as copper oxides, are cheap, abundant and non-toxic, but their performance does not come close to silicon, which dominates the semiconductor market.

However, the researchers found that by growing the copper oxide crystals in a specific orientation so that electric charges move through the crystals at a diagonal, the charges move much faster and further, greatly improving performance. Tests of a copper oxide light harvester, or photocathode, based on this fabrication technique showed a 70% improvement over existing state-of-the-art oxide photocathodes, while also showing greatly improved stability.

̽��ֱ��researchers say their results, reported in the journal Nature, show how low-cost materials could be fine-tuned to power the transition away from fossil fuels and toward clean, sustainable fuels that can be stored and used with existing energy infrastructure.

Copper (I) oxide, or cuprous oxide, has been touted as a cheap potential replacement for silicon for years, since it is reasonably effective at capturing sunlight and converting it into electric charge. However, much of that charge tends to get lost, limiting the material’s performance.

“Like other oxide semiconductors, cuprous oxide has its intrinsic challenges,” said co-first author Dr Linfeng Pan from Cambridge’s Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology. “One of those challenges is the mismatch between how deep light is absorbed and how far the charges travel within the material, so most of the oxide below the top layer of material is essentially dead space.”

“For most solar cell materials, it’s defects on the surface of the material that cause a reduction in performance, but with these oxide materials, it’s the other way round: the surface is largely fine, but something about the bulk leads to losses,” said Professor Sam Stranks, who led the research. “This means the way the crystals are grown is vital to their performance.”

To develop cuprous oxides to the point where they can be a credible contender to established photovoltaic materials, they need to be optimised so they can efficiently generate and move electric charges – made of an electron and a positively-charged electron ‘hole’ – when sunlight hits them.

One potential optimisation approach is single-crystal thin films – very thin slices of material with a highly-ordered crystal structure, which are often used in electronics. However, making these films is normally a complex and time-consuming process.

Using thin film deposition techniques, the researchers were able to grow high-quality cuprous oxide films at ambient pressure and room temperature. By precisely controlling growth and flow rates in the chamber, they were able to ‘shift’ the crystals into a particular orientation. Then, using high temporal resolution spectroscopic techniques, they were able to observe how the orientation of the crystals affected how efficiently electric charges moved through the material.

“These crystals are basically cubes, and we found that when the electrons move through the cube at a body diagonal, rather than along the face or edge of the cube, they move an order of magnitude further,” said Pan. “ ̽��ֱ��further the electrons move, the better the performance.”

“Something about that diagonal direction in these materials is magic,” said Stranks. “We need to carry out further work to fully understand why and optimise it further, but it has so far resulted in a huge jump in performance.” Tests of a cuprous oxide photocathode made using this technique showed an increase in performance of more than 70% over existing state-of-the-art electrodeposited oxide photocathodes.

“In addition to the improved performance, we found that the orientation makes the films much more stable, but factors beyond the bulk properties may be at play,” said Pan.

̽��ֱ��researchers say that much more research and development is still needed, but this and related families of materials could have a vital role in the energy transition.

“There’s still a long way to go, but we’re on an exciting trajectory,” said Stranks. “There’s a lot of interesting science to come from these materials, and it’s interesting for me to connect the physics of these materials with their growth, how they form, and ultimately how they perform.”

̽��ֱ��research was a collaboration with École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Nankai ̽��ֱ�� and Uppsala ̽��ֱ��. ̽��ֱ��research was supported in part by the European Research Council, the Swiss National Science Foundation, and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). Sam Stranks is Professor of Optoelectronics in the Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology, and a Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge.

Reference:
Linfeng Pan, Linjie Dai et al. ‘High carrier mobility along the [111] orientation in Cu2O photoelectrodes.’ Nature (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-07273-8

Researchers have found a way to super-charge the ‘engine’ of sustainable fuel generation – by giving the materials a little twist.

orange via Getty Images

Abstract orange swirls

Yes

Clean, sustainable fuels made ‘from thin air’ and plastic waste

sc604 — Mon, 19 Jun 2023 15:15:53 +0000

̽��ֱ��researchers, from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, developed a solar-powered reactor that converts captured CO2 and plastic waste into sustainable fuels and other valuable chemical products. In tests, CO2 was converted into syngas, a key building block for sustainable liquid fuels, and plastic bottles were converted into glycolic acid, which is widely used in the cosmetics industry.

Unlike earlier tests of their solar fuels technology however, the team took CO2 from real-world sources – such as industrial exhaust or the air itself. ̽��ֱ��researchers were able to capture and concentrate the CO2 and convert it into sustainable fuel.

Although improvements are needed before this technology can be used at an industrial scale, the results, reported in the journal Joule, represent another important step toward the production of clean fuels to power the economy, without the need for environmentally destructive oil and gas extraction.

For several years, Professor Erwin Reisner’s research group, based in the Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry, has been developing sustainable, net-zero carbon fuels inspired by photosynthesis – the process by which plants convert sunlight into food – using artificial leaves. These artificial leaves convert CO2 and water into fuels using just the power of the sun.

To date, their solar-driven experiments have used pure, concentrated CO2 from a cylinder, but for the technology to be of practical use, it needs to be able to actively capture CO2 from industrial processes, or directly from the air. However, since CO2 is just one of many types of molecules in the air we breathe, making this technology selective enough to convert highly diluted CO2 is a huge technical challenge.

“We’re not just interested in decarbonisation, but de-fossilisation – we need to completely eliminate fossil fuels in order to create a truly circular economy,” said Reisner. “In the medium term, this technology could help reduce carbon emissions by capturing them from industry and turning them into something useful, but ultimately, we need to cut fossil fuels out of the equation entirely and capture CO2 from the air.”

̽��ֱ��researchers took their inspiration from carbon capture and storage (CCS), where CO2 is captured and then pumped and stored underground.

“CCS is a technology that’s popular with the fossil fuel industry as a way to reduce carbon emissions while continuing oil and gas exploration,” said Reisner. “But if instead of carbon capture and storage, we had carbon capture and utilisation, we could make something useful from CO2 instead of burying it underground, with unknown long-term consequences, and eliminate the use of fossil fuels.”

̽��ֱ��researchers adapted their solar-driven technology so that it works with flue gas or directly from the air, converting CO2 and plastics into fuel and chemicals using only the power of the sun.

By bubbling air through the system containing an alkaline solution, the CO2 selectively gets trapped, and the other gases present in air, such as nitrogen and oxygen, harmlessly bubble out. This bubbling process allows the researchers to concentrate the CO2 from air in solution, making it easier to work with.

̽��ֱ��integrated system contains a photocathode and an anode. ̽��ֱ��system has two compartments: on one side is captured CO2 solution that gets converted into syngas, a simple fuel. On the other plastics are converted into useful chemicals using only sunlight.

“ ̽��ֱ��plastic component is an important trick to this system,” said co-first author Dr Motiar Rahaman. “Capturing and using CO2 from the air makes the chemistry more difficult. But, if we add plastic waste to the system, the plastic donates electrons to the CO2. ̽��ֱ��plastic breaks down to glycolic acid, which is widely used in the cosmetics industry, and the CO2 is converted into syngas, which is a simple fuel.”

“This solar-powered system takes two harmful waste products – plastic and carbon emissions – and converts them into something truly useful,” said co-first author Dr Sayan Kar.

“Instead of storing CO2 underground, like in CCS, we can capture it from the air and make clean fuel from it,” said Rahaman. “This way, we can cut out the fossil fuel industry from the process of fuel production, which can hopefully help us avoid climate destruction.”

“ ̽��ֱ��fact that we can effectively take CO2 from air and make something useful from it is special,” said Kar. “It’s satisfying to see that we can actually do it using only sunlight.”

̽��ֱ��scientists are currently working on a bench-top demonstrator device with improved efficiency and practicality to highlight the benefits of coupling direct air capture with CO2 utilisation as a path to a zero-carbon future.

̽��ֱ��research was supported in part by the Weizmann Institute of Science, the European Commission Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship, the Winton Programme for the Physics of Sustainability, and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). Erwin Reisner is a Fellow and Motiar Rahaman is a Research Associate of St John’s College, Cambridge. Erwin Reisner leads the Cambridge Circular Plastics Centre (CirPlas), which aims to eliminate plastic waste by combining blue-sky thinking with practical measures.

Reference:
Sayan Kar, Motiar Rahaman et al. ‘Integrated Capture and Solar-driven Utilization of CO2 from Flue Gas and Air.’ Joule (2023). DOI: 10.1016/j.joule.2023.05.022

For more information on energy-related research in Cambridge, please visit Energy IRC, which brings together Cambridge’s research knowledge and expertise, in collaboration with global partners, to create solutions for a sustainable and resilient energy landscape for generations to come.

Researchers have demonstrated how carbon dioxide can be captured from industrial processes – or even directly from the air – and transformed into clean, sustainable fuels using just the energy from the sun.

We’re not just interested in decarbonisation, but de-fossilisation – we need to completely eliminate fossil fuels in order to create a truly circular economy

Erwin Reisner

Ariffin Mohamad Annuar

Carbon capture from air and its photoelectrochemical conversion into fuel with simultaneous waste plastic conversion into chemicals.

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

Yes

Driving on sunshine: clean, usable liquid fuels made from solar power

sc604 — Thu, 18 May 2023 15:01:02 +0000

̽��ֱ��researchers, from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, harnessed the power of photosynthesis to convert CO2, water and sunlight into multicarbon fuels – ethanol and propanol – in a single step. These fuels have a high energy density and can be easily stored or transported.

Unlike fossil fuels, these solar fuels produce net-zero carbon emissions and are completely renewable, and unlike most bioethanol, they do not divert any agricultural land away from food production.

While the technology is still at laboratory scale, the researchers say their ‘artificial leaves’ are an important step in the transition away from a fossil fuel-based economy. ̽��ֱ��results are reported in the journal Nature Energy.

Bioethanol is touted as a cleaner alternative to petrol, since it is made from plants instead of fossil fuels. Most cars and trucks on the road today run on petrol containing up to 10% ethanol (E10 fuel). ̽��ֱ��United States is the world’s largest bioethanol producer: according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, almost 45% of all corn grown in the US is used for ethanol production.

“Biofuels like ethanol are a controversial technology, not least because they take up agricultural land that could be used to grow food instead,” said Professor Erwin Reisner, who led the research.

For several years, Reisner’s research group, based in the Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry, has been developing sustainable, zero-carbon fuels inspired by photosynthesis – the process by which plants convert sunlight into food – using artificial leaves.

To date, these artificial leaves have only been able to make simple chemicals, such as syngas, a mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide that is used to produce fuels, pharmaceuticals, plastics and fertilisers. But to make the technology more practical, it would need to be able to produce more complex chemicals directly in a single solar-powered step.

Now, the artificial leaf can directly produce clean ethanol and propanol without the need for the intermediary step of producing syngas.

̽��ֱ��researchers developed a copper and palladium-based catalyst. ̽��ֱ��catalyst was optimised in a way that allowed the artificial leaf to produce more complex chemicals, specifically the multicarbon alcohols ethanol and n-propanol. Both alcohols are high energy density fuels that can be easily transported and stored.

Other scientists have been able to produce similar chemicals using electrical power, but this is the first time that such complex chemicals have been produced with an artificial leaf using only the energy from the Sun.

“Shining sunlight on the artificial leaves and getting liquid fuel from carbon dioxide and water is an amazing bit of chemistry,” said Dr Motiar Rahaman, the paper’s first author. “Normally, when you try to convert CO2 into another chemical product using an artificial leaf device, you almost always get carbon monoxide or syngas, but here, we’ve been able to produce a practical liquid fuel just using the power of the Sun. It’s an exciting advance that opens up whole new avenues in our work.”

At present, the device is a proof of concept and shows only modest efficiency. ̽��ֱ��researchers are working to optimise the light absorbers so that they can better absorb sunlight and optimising the catalyst so it can convert more sunlight into fuel. Further work will also be required to make the device scalable so that it can produce large volumes of fuel.

“Even though there’s still work to be done, we’ve shown what these artificial leaves are capable of doing,” said Reisner. “It’s important to show that we can go beyond the simplest molecules and make things that are directly useful as we transition away from fossil fuels.”

̽��ֱ��research was supported in part by the European Commission Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship, the Cambridge Trust, and the Winton Programme for the Physics of Sustainability. Erwin Reisner is a Fellow and Motiar Rahaman is a Research Associate of St John’s College, Cambridge.

Reference:
Motiar Rahaman et al. ‘Solar-driven liquid multi-carbon fuel production using a standalone perovskite-BiVO4 artificial leaf.’ Nature Energy (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41560-023-01262-3

Researchers have developed a solar-powered technology that converts carbon dioxide and water into liquid fuels that can be added directly to a car’s engine as drop-in fuel.

Shining sunlight on the artificial leaves and getting liquid fuel from carbon dioxide and water is an amazing bit of chemistry

Motiar Rahaman

A photoreactor with an artificial leaf working under solar irradiation.

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

Yes

Can aviation be sustainable?

sc604 — Wed, 23 Nov 2022 16:28:40 +0000

Air travel is one of the major contributors to global warming. Cambridge scientists are working with leading energy companies to help develop sustainable aviation fuels, which could reduce the industry’s carbon emissions by up to 80%.

̽��ֱ��future of aviation: how will we fly to COP in 2035?

Anonymous — Fri, 18 Nov 2022 09:33:50 +0000

Along with all areas of the global economy, flight must become climate neutral. However, huge uncertainty remains around what technology, policy, finance, and behaviour will be needed to get it there.

Inspired by a call in early 2020 from His Majesty, King Charles III, for industry, academia, and Government to move much faster to get aviation to net zero, the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge set up the Aviation Impact Accelerator (AIA). ̽��ֱ��AIA aims to accelerate the journey to sustainable aviation by developing evidence-based tools that allow people to map, understand, and embark on the pathways towards sustainable flight.   

̽��ֱ��team are now working on the Journey Impact Simulator, a tool that can be used to explore how a flight from A to B might look now and in the future, showing the best possible technology options to minimise climate impact while showing the user the trade-offs in terms of cost, land and electricity required. This tool draws results from the whole system model built by the AIA’s international and multi-disciplinary team.

“What we are trying to do is work with experts from industry, government, academia and civil society from around the world to identify 'unlocks' which will open the door to much wider transformation in the sector,” explains Professor Rob Miller, AIA lead and Director of the Whittle Laboratory, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge.

Dr Samuel Gabra, an Egyptian research associate with the AIA, is passionate about scaling up energy access while reaching net-zero. Explaining how one might use the Simulator to explore a flight from London to Sharm El Sheikh in 2035, he says that the model suggests a synthetic jet fuel and hydrogen combustion aircraft as the best options for limiting the climate impact.

“Although we reduce emissions by depending on hydrogen and synthetic jet fuel, this comes with a significant cost,” Gabra says.

It is startling to see the cost, land and electricity required for these future options. For example, for just one flight from London to Egypt in 2035 using synthetic jet fuel, the electricity requirement is approximately 166% of Egypt’s average electricity use per capita per year.

Gabra adds: “As we saw, the future of sustainable aviation is likely to require a huge amount of energy, which means it is impossible for a single country or region to single-handedly provide this amount of energy. This presents an opportunity for all countries, especially developing ones, to participate in the future of sustainable aviation. By capitalising on their abundant renewable resources, countries can act as hubs for producing green electricity and synthetic jet fuel.”

It is vital that as the world faces climate change adaptation and mitigation, all countries are included in the discussion around the opportunities and challenges. Aviation plays a key role in connecting our world, but access to the economic and social opportunities it brings are not equally available. As the aviation industry works to transform the sector, it is not just the climate impact that must be considered but the impact on people.

Adapted from an article from the Aviation Impact Accelerator

In the week of COP27 people across the world have flown to Sharm El Sheikh to discuss action on climate change. Aviation is a crucial way to bring us together to tackle this challenge – but it is also a major contributor to the problem.

̽��ֱ��future of sustainable aviation is likely to require a huge amount of energy... This presents an opportunity for all countries, especially developing ones, to participate in the future of sustainable aviation

Samuel Gabra

How will we fly to COP in 2035?

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Aeroplane flying

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

Yes