Approved for progression by Gold Standard, SATAVIA’s methodology enables issuance of Certified Mitigation Outcome Units (CMOUs) for non-CO2 emissions avoided.

CAMBRIDGE, UNITED KINGDOM, August 7, 2023/EINPresswire.com/ -- SATAVIA, an industry-leading green aviation SME, has received Gold Standard approval for a contrail management methodology concept. The decision paves the way for the future issuance of “Certified Mitigation Outcome Units" (CMOUs), providing an incentive for aircraft operators to reduce the climate impact associated with aircraft contrails.

Aircraft-generated condensation trails, or contrails, are short-lived climate forcers (SLCFs) that cause up to 2.4 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) each year. This amounts to over 60% of aviation’s climate impact, around double that of direct CO2 emissions from aircraft emissions.

“Short-lived climate forcers are an important and growing field of climate impact mitigation, pioneered by Gold Standard in 2015,” said Owen Hewlett, Chief Technical Officer at Gold Standard. “It is clear that in order to combat the climate crisis we need to couple a serious conversation about the volume and necessity of flights, with a significant reduction in the impact of flying. SATAVIA’s methodology is an example of a novel activity addressing short lived climate forcers and will provide aircraft operators with a clear incentive to implement contrail management in day-to-day activity, making a tangible reduction of aviation’s climate impact.”

SATAVIA will now proceed with developing the methodology, aiming to obtain approval from the experts on Gold Standard’s Technical Advisory Committee, and could achieve Design Certification as soon as late 2023 or early 2024. This will enable the issuance of contrail CMOUs against declared aviation non-CO2 climate impact inventories, thereby ensuring their use in support of contrail management activity.

CMOUs will also be subject to sector-specific rules and restrictions, limiting their use to in-sector stakeholders. In parallel, GS will also develop registry functionality to allow CMOU trading. Additionally, SATAVIA will seek CMOU recognition from CORSIA (Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation), with the aim of bringing contrail management incentives to the widest possible market.

“This exciting development will supercharge industry progress towards greener flight operations,” said Head of Sustainability and Business Excellence at Etihad Airways, Mariam Musallam Al-Qubaisi. “By implementing small navigational changes to a minority of flights, Etihad can use SATAVIA technology to prevent contrails and generate CMOUs to support new and more sustainable business models.”

The Gold Standard announcement follows SATAVIA’s early engagements with leading operators Etihad, KLM and KLM Cityhopper, and Emirates, in addition to multiple operator demonstrations supported by European Space Agency (ESA) through the ESA Business Applications programme. Contrail management offers operators the ability to rapidly reduce their climate impact on near-term timescales, compared to multi-year/decadal timelines for development of new fuels and propulsion systems.

“Our practical approach to contrail mitigation offers an incentive for aircraft operators to immediately start cutting their non-CO2 climate footprint, which we hope will drive rapid adoption across the industry”, said SATAVIA CEO, Dr Adam Durant. “As a software solution incorporating the excellent, decades-mature atmospheric science available to us, contrail management provides the airline sector with an immediate and tangible option to reduce the climate impact of flying. With the incentive provided by Gold Standard CMOUs, aviation could reduce its non-CO2 impact by perhaps 50% before 2030. All we need is a willingness to adopt this approach, which importantly doesn’t require any changes to regulation and could be deployed at scale today.”

Conor Farrington
SATAVIA
conor.farrington@satavia.com
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