Toward a Greener Sky: Developing a new Environmental Performance Metric

I recently had the privilege of attending a panel at the Royal Aeronautical Society’s Sustainability Conference where, amongst other things such as airspace modernisation, new technologies, and ATM optimisation, I touched on the work NATS has been doing to develop an improved environmental metric for the aviation industry.

NATS’ Three-Dimensional Insights (3Di) metric has been the industry benchmark for environmental performance since 2012, designed to provide a high-level overview of airspace efficiency by translating complex operational data into a single score. We were the first Air Navigation Service Provider globally to have a KPI in airspace efficiency, and today, we’re still the only ANSP in Europe to have a financial incentive linked to an environmental KPI.

Groundbreaking when introduced, hands on experience, advances in technology and access to new sources of data, mean the time is right to build on 3Di’s capabilities. We are continuing to lead the industry in our efforts to support our customers’ needs in sustainable operations and as such we are actively developing new ways to measure performance.

A lot has happened since 3Di’s development 15 years ago: the Paris Agreement was signed to minimise Global Warming to 1.5°C, both NATS and the wider aviation industry have made a commitment to net zero carbon emissions, and with that, the focus of both our customers and regulator has changed.

We brought together operational controllers, airline representatives, and environmental stakeholders for a dedicated workshop, where we focused on how environmental metrics can better reflect and support operational realities. It was a day of lively discussion, with varied and valuable perspectives on the strengths, limitations, and future potential of tools like 3Di, and what might come next.

To ensure that a new metric works for the industry, it is essential that we put our airline customers at the forefront of the discussion, reviewing how environmental performance is monitored and reported collaboratively. It needs to be fit for the future, building on lessons learnt from 3Di and considering feedback received from industry.

One of the clearest themes from the session was that while 3Di remains a core component to our environmental reporting, we need to incorporate the things that matter most to our airline customers in their day-to-day operations. Metrics like on-time performance, holding time, and planned versus actual fuel usage are the things that influence their decision-making.

Many of the workshop participants, particularly those from airlines, highlighted that the ability to see inefficiency reports, comparative dashboards, and trend data across flights or routes was a significant gap in our current offering to them. Providing this kind of visibility was seen as a powerful enabler of operational and environmental performance. Any metric needs to be understandable and meaningful whilst comparative across the industry.

There is encouraging and growing interest from ANSPs in carbon accreditation initiatives such as CANSO’s Green ATM, airspace modernisation and new technology solutions, such as NATS Services Green Aviation Insights tool.

So what comes next?  The workshop proved hugely valuable and the main themes from the discussion are already being used to develop our performance monitoring. The insights from the workshop are also feeding into our NR28* development, and we’ll be continuing to work with stakeholders across the industry.

The aim is to evolve how we define and measure environmental performance in a way that aids decision making across the aviation industry. Our NR28 prospectus will have more detail on the metric framework and will be available next month.

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*NR28 is the price control period covering January 2028 to December 2032 inclusive.

The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) economically regulates NERL through five-year price control periods. As part of this cycle, NERL consults with our airline customers and develops a five-year business plan which we submit to the CAA. The CAA considers our business plan and then publishes its decision in the form of a plan for the price control period which sets the targets and investment levels they expect us to deliver through our business plan.