These Nasa innovations could save airlines US$250 billion and cut greenhouse emissions

Nasa research aimed at cutting fuel consumption, pollution and noise from planes could pay off to the tune of more than US$250 billion for US airlines, the agency said this week.

Green technologies developed by the research project are expected to save billions of litres of fuel if implemented, cutting carbon emissions and reducing air pollution in the process.

The research was conducted between 2009 and 2015 as a part of Nasa’s Environmentally Responsible Aviation (ERA) project, which was designed with the purpose of developing and testing new technologies to reduce the impact of aviation on the environment. The overall goal, according to ERA project manager Fay Collier, was to come up with solutions that would improve noise, pollution and carbon output all at the same time, rather than sacrificing one area in order to improve another.

“It was a push to develop integrated solutions that would reduce those goals simultaneously,” Collier said. By the time the project concluded, the researchers had completed eight integrated technology demonstrations, which they hope will be further honed and adopted by the private sector in the coming years.

The conclusion of the project comes at a timely point, as there’s been a surge of recent interest in and research on the carbon footprint of aircraft. According to the US Environmental Protection Agency, aircraft emit 11 per cent of all the greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector in the US and 3 per cent of the country’s total greenhouse gas emissions.

In 2015, the agency issued a notice including its intent to co-operate with the UN’s International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) on the creation and adoption of future international carbon dioxide standards for aircraft.

The ICAO estimates that aircraft account for about 2 per cent of all global greenhouse gas emissions and that these emissions are expected to grow by 3 to 4 per cent each year as global air travel continues to increase. The European Commission has cited estimates suggesting that aircraft emissions in 2020 will be about 70 percent higher than they were in 2005.