Fuel for thought

Andrew Caughey, head of sustainable aviation at AtkinsRéalis, offers advice to airports seeking to become future fuels ready.

Airports will be a critical enabler for the transition to zero emission flights. While future flight aircraft are progressing swiftly through their development cycle, they won’t be able to deliver on their promise of cleaner aviation and improved connectivity without appropriate infrastructure ‘on the ground’ to support their operation.

Sitting at the heart of the aviation ecosystem, airports will need to adapt to ensure they can support multiple fuels through the transition, at pace.

But designing for the future is about more than predicting what it will look like – it’s about turning predictions into projects that deliver results to meet ever-changing aviation needs.

This presents airports with significant challenges: they need to consider and accommodate multiple changes to their infrastructure, against the context of existing masterplans and capital programmes.

They will need to move from providing a single primary fuel type, to supporting multiple fuel types, to service novel aircraft and new operational concepts.

But as technology is evolving at different paces the fuel mix will change over time, based on technology developments and future operational needs. Managing this transition will also be a major challenge.

And with the majority of aviation emissions coming from fuel burn in aircraft, classified as Scope 3 (indirect) emissions for an airport, they face the further challenge of tracking, controlling and managing emissions from their supply chain, as opposed to from their own direct emissions.

With these challenges, however, come numerous possibilities to capture the disruptive new opportunities arising from the advanced air mobility market, to operate as energy hubs, or even to future-proof existing planned developments.

Add to this the contribution future fuels readiness makes to emissions’ reduction and social value, and overcoming these challenges could offer airports a competitive edge.

Demand, supply and implementation

No two airports are the same, so global technology roadmaps – whilst useful for illustration – need to be adapted to consider each airport’s specific context and requirements.

A systematic approach is required, to assess what the transition to future fuels means for individual airports, recognising their varying operations and constraints. The drivers for change, and the pace of transition will be different for each airport, but we believe the approach needed can be broken down into three fundamental blocks of analysis – demand, supply and implementation.

Demand analysis delivers understanding of the scale of storage required for future fuel flight operations. First evaluating airports’ planned movements, growth, routes and existing fleet, it then uses aerospace insights and experience to enable assessment of how new propulsion technologies will directly impact aircraft operating from these airports. This converts abstract technology roadmaps into useful planning intelligence for airport teams.

Supply assessment explores how to secure the energy required to power the fleet – considering existing resources, and what is available across the full range of future fuels – either local to the airport or by import – to meet the projected demand.

This can include assessing the potential of the airport acting as an energy hub, by generating ‘behind the meter’ or by securing a supply of Sustainable Aviation Fuels (SAF).

Implementation planning draws on masterplanning and infrastructure expertise to identify the critical challenges and opportunities future fuels offer to each individual airport.

With airports potentially considering their fuelling strategy and partnerships, policies and incentives, or planning and spatial constraints linked to infrastructure developments, this enables sequencing of developments – allowing airports to prioritise specific interventions as they integrate emerging fuel and power generation technologies into their aviation ecosystem.

Accelerating sustainable flight

We’ve delivered this approach at airports such as Keflavík in Iceland, where we worked alongside global consultancy and construction firm, Mace, to help the airport assess its future fuels technical requirements ahead of masterplanning and development activities.

Step 1 – Baseline

• Forecasts and flight data

• Fleet replacement

• Development plans

Step 2 – Demand

• Traditional fuels

• Total energy

• Future fuel allocation

Step 3 – Supply

• Supply

• Storage

• Distribution

Step 4 – Infrastructure

• Off airport

• On airport

• Operations

Step 5 – Planning

• Masterplan overlay

• Road map

• Future focus areas

Using a five-step process, moving from baselining, through demand, supply, infrastructure and planning (as shown above) tailored to each airport’s operation, input from key airport stakeholders is essential to each stage.

For example, understanding how future fuel contributes to total energy demand would be aerospace engineer-led, while process engineers would lead on fuel source and supply, and airport planning on infrastructure requirements.

Time-based scenarios help inform future fuel uptake testing sensitivity. This process can help underpin development planning – ensuring, for example, space is reserved for fuel storage, or providing input into infrastructure plans such as electrical supply upgrades – and can offer a timeline for decision making and future investment.

Supporting Keflavík in this way, we helped it to quantify and rationalise its requirements, enabled its impactful interactions with airlines, and regional and local government stakeholders, and empowered the development of its plans to implement future fuels.

Enabling resilience and compliance

If you are involved in helping airports face similar challenges, it’s also important to consider the resilience aspect of properly assessing your organisation’s future fuels readiness. This may be in the context of energy security, ensuring continuity of fuel supply from a diverse future supply chain to avoid future service disruptions and understand the necessary reserves of each fuel type.

Alternatively, you may be focused on enabling compliance with sectoral obligations on the adoption of SAF and alternative fuels such as RefuelEU, or the UK SAF mandate.

Irrespective of your strategic driver, it is crucial to act from a position of knowledge, bringing supporting data to quantify the size and timescales of the disruptive impact to your airport arising from this transition.

Whether the decision is to act immediately, or to leave space for future activity, a data-driven approach helps align the myriad of stakeholders who drive change at airports and direct capital spend.

Our goal is to help airports efficiently accelerate their decarbonisation, enabling them to take advantage of the benefits of emerging technologies such as electric and hydrogen aviation, to capitalise on disruptive new transportation modes such as Advanced Air Mobility, and to secure the required supply of SAF, all whilst improving connectivity and customer experience.

In an era where the future of aviation is being reimagined at the crossroads of traditional sectors, by becoming future fuel ready airports can help to accelerate the realisation of low carbon, sustainable flight.