Ms. Celine Fornaro, Head of Aerospace & Defense at UBS Equity Research – Conference “Green Power: Will climate change propel the sector towards Hybrid Electric Aviation by 2028?”
A report by XU Liu & Sankha GANGULI, AerospaceMBA Long Haul
On Friday, 27th September we had the opportunity to listen to Ms. Celine Fornaro, Head of Aerospace & Defense at UBS Equity Research on Green Power: Will climate change propel the sector towards Hybrid Electric Aviation by 2028? during the monthly USAIRE luncheon.
Introduction by Lionel Romanetti, President of USAIRE South West
She opened her speech by calling out a survey carried out in UK, France, Germany & USA among 6000 respondents on whether they had ever considered reducing the number of flights because of environmental reasons. The results were not overwhelmingly encouraging but there is a growing public awareness to protect the environment, although consumer behavior towards it keep changing. Then she moved to another contentious issue relating to the construction of the third runway at London Heathrow and believes that technology has to leapfrog from its present standard to offset addition in emissions and justify such initiatives in future. Although aviation accounts for only 2-3% of global greenhouse gases, she outlined how strong the sentiment is in favour of reducing carbon footprint through reducing air travel, particularly in some of the Scandinavian countries.
She outlined that the industry has to move in the direction of adopting more hybrid technologies and governments have to provide support in the form of subsidies. However, something very opposite happened in France Germany & Switzerland recently where there was an increase in tax irrespective of the quality and age of the aircraft operated. Therefore, from the industry standpoint there needs to be a recognition that something needs to be done because its potentially the consumer who is pushing for these changes and this is very different from the technological changes previously seen.
She opined that it’s time the aerospace industry seriously starts looking for cleaner technologies because the transformation would not happen overnight but in small increments, like it happened in every other sphere. However, the research carried out includes more of the financial perspective, rather than technological. Due to public awareness and even regulatory pressures, the technological shift towards of Hybrid Electric (HE) Aviation is not only necessary, but imperative given the consequences on peoples’ lives otherwise. She concluded by saying that it is critical for aviation industry to adopt green power, to retain public confidence and appeal, and also gave her roadmap for HE Aviation.
