It is now a scientific certainty that the impact of contrails and contrail-induced cirrus clouds, despite their relatively short lifetime, have at least an equivalent impact on the climate as CO2 emissions, and potentially up to twice that. What can we do about it?

The latest forecasts suggest Europe’s summer traffic levels will be close to 85% of what we saw before the pandemic, with flight numbers even exceeding pre-Covid levels at certain times and in certain places.

Building on the research and the experience of live trials with SATAVIA, we hope to get a better understanding of what contrail formation means for our controllers and operation over the North Atlantic and how we could implement avoidance strategies without increasing fuel consumption, and CO2 emissions.

Earlier this month, I was invited to present at the Asia Pacific (APAC) Civil Air Navigation Services Organisation CEO Committee Meeting to talk about our recent deployment of Free Route Airspace and the benefits it could deliver across the region.

FlyZero is looking to realise the UK’s ambition to develop a zero-carbon emission aircraft. Nearly a year on the project has reported its findings, which demonstrate the huge potential of green liquid hydrogen to power even long-haul aircraft.

The Covid pandemic had a huge impact on aviation. Almost overnight the volume of traffic in the UK dropped hugely, by up to 90%. But this also provided an unexpected opportunity to see how we could use the UK’s airspace more efficiently.

As climate change continues to make its presence felt, and events like Storm Arwen become more regular and severe, we need to embed climate resilience into our facilities and operations.

By 2030, the aviation industry is targeting an overall reduction of at least 15% in net CO2 emissions relative to 2019, and a 40% net reduction by 2040. Managing our airspace more effectively, and flying more efficiently, will play a crucial role in the future of aviation.

As the Prime Minister arrived in Cornwall for last week’s G7 meeting, he declared “the UK is actually in the lead in developing sustainable aviation fuel, and one of the points in the 10 point plan of our green industrial revolution, is to get to ‘jet zero’ as well.”

So what is the UK doing to deliver ‘jet zero’ and reduce emissions from aviation? And how is NATS playing a part?

NATS can trace its sustainability programme back to 2008.  We’re proud that we were among the first in our industry to recognise the climate challenge and start to put in place measures to address the impact we have.