The EU project EXAELIA aims to accelerate the reduction of aviation emissions and its climate and environmental impacts. The project will evaluate novel flying test beds which are needed for de-risking the development of future long-range aircraft, thereby also helping the European industry to maintain its market position in aviation. The project’s official kick-off meeting was held on 22 January 2025, in Amsterdam. The consortium is coordinated by NLR.
At the COP29 summit recently held in Baku, Azerbaijan, ICAO council president President Sciacchitano highlighted the pivotal role of aviation for global connectivity and economic growth, while climate impact needs to be reduced towards the net-zero target in 2050.
Currently, only 10% of the global population flies, representing alone almost 3% of the worlds global CO2 emissions. This growth potential poses a challenge because already in the European Union, aviation generates over 25% of all transport emissions. Therefore, investing in research and innovation has become imperative to reduce the impact of aviation on global warming and reach carbon neutrality of the sector by 2040. At the same time, it is also imperative that the EU maintains its position as market leader in aviation, by also leading the development of green solutions in aviation.
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Download free sample pagesThe EU funded Clean Aviation program targets aircraft and propulsion technologies with primary focus to regional and short-mid range aircraft. Based on scale-up of its technologies for aircraft with sustainable aviation fuel as energy source, Clean Aviation projects a reduction of 30% of the CO2 emissions of long-range aircraft, with entry into service (EIS) after 2040. Complementary to Clean Aviation, more radical changes in long range aircraft configurations and propulsion concepts are needed to cut carbon emissions of long-range flights by 60 to 100%. Such radically-changed aircraft concepts are the focus of the EXAELIA project, which aims to accelerate their development to enable entry-into-service by 2045-2050.
Disruptive future aircraft
Developing radically-changed aircraft concepts comes with high investments and risks. The objective of EXAELIA is to evaluate novel flying testbeds which are needed for de-risking the development of those disruptive future long-range aircraft. Novel flying test beds will thus accelerate the reduction of all aviation emissions and its climate and environmental impacts by 2050. EXAELIA will predesign flying test beds for the most urgent flight test needs for the disruptive long-range aircraft, while allowing further re-use of the flying test beds for additional flight test needs. EXAELIA novel approach extends beyond current technology demonstrators, which are for Tube and Wing aircraft configurations. The project can play an important role in making room for these disruptive technologies in the traditional aircraft configuration.
Potential emissions reduction
EXAELIA investigates, through advanced multi-disciplinary digital methods, the potential emissions reduction of long-range air traffic offered by promising blended wing body aircraft configurations and by hydrogen-powered tube-and-wing configurations, including their constituting radical new technologies. Critical uncertainties are identified, in particular those requiring flight validation for de-risking the future aircraft development, such as low speed flight dynamics and control . For those flight test requirements which go beyond the capabilities of existing assets, novel flying testbeds are developed towards their preliminary design and demonstrated to answer the flight validation needs, efficiently combining these needs in potentially costly large-scale modular flying testbeds.
Roadmaps, but also operational and business plans, are prepared for the further development of the EXAELIA flying testbeds and the use of these assets in the development of the future long-range aircraft, entering into service before 2050.
The partnership
EXAELIA (an acronym for ‘experimental aircraft for European leadership in aviation’) is a 42 months research and innovation action funded by the European Commission under the Horizon Europe Programme (GA n°101191922) with a total budget of 16.4 million Euros, involving 23 partners. The consortium coordinated by NLR, consists of the major European research centres (9 of them being active EREA members) and academia in future aircraft conceptual design and analysis, flight testing, and flying testbed development, and 4 SMEs, all with a strong record in collaboration and spread over 13 European countries which represent a significant portion of Europe’s aviation industry base. An Advisory Board, including European aircraft and engine manufacturers and further industries will provide guidance to achieving the objective and to obtaining their support to the roadmaps.