By Jean-Paul Herteman, former Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of SAFRAN, Honorary Member of the AAE.
The decarbonisation of air transport is imperative. Admittedly, this represents a relatively modest share of total greenhouse gas emissions, about 2.5% (with an equivalent impact reaching up to perhaps 4% due to contrails, we will come back to this). But its very strong growth (on average 2 times faster than that of GDP over the past 60 years) leaves no doubt: neither about the need to fully control its carbon footprint … nor about the human appetite for this exceptional mobility tool. And reminds us in passing how damaging it would be, in the absence of technical solutions, to have to consider restricting our freedom of use. However, these technical solutions are within our reach, and very concretely deployable in the coming decades. In all likelihood, they will be based on the combination of two essential levers, the replacement of fossil fuel by a carbon-neutral energy source on the one hand, and a quantitative leap to improve the energy efficiency of aircraft on the other, because these alternative energies will inevitably be expensive and not infinitely available.