Regional aircraft flying 500 to 1000 kilometres with up to 100 seats will soon carry a hybrid-electric engine that burns at least 50% less fuel than today’s models. Aviation’s carbon footprint is dominated by short- and medium-range flights, but fully electric or hydrogen-powered planes remain a decade or more away. The AMBER project tackles this gap by developing a parallel hybrid-electric propulsion system that combines a thermal engine running on 100% sustainable aviation fuel with a fuel cell and battery pack. This intermediate step aims for entry into service by 2035, cutting mission fuel burn by at least 50% compared to 2020 aircraft, and reducing lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions by 90% when using sustainable fuel. If successful, the technology would transform regional air travel—the workhorse routes that connect smaller cities and feed into major hubs. Airlines could operate cleaner, quieter planes on these high-volume routes without waiting for full electrification. The project matures key components and validates a product-representative architecture, de-risking the pathway for larger aircraft later. For passengers, it means lower-emission flights on the journeys they take most often, while the aviation industry gains a practical, near-term route to decarbonisation.
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Climate change poses an unprecedented challenge on today’s society. Numerous studies highlight the urgent need to decarbonize global industry and to drastically reduce pollutant emissions across all sectors, including aviation. Although, the global environmental impact of aviation is mostly driven by small-medium range market aircraft due to the large volume of operations, the development of disruptive technologies for the power demands such applications require cannot be put in place until progressive maturation of novel enabling technologies has been achieved at lower scale or sizes. The transformation of regional aviation, i.e., aircraft serving distances of 500 to 1000 km at a capacity of up to 100 seats, will thus lead the way towards sustainability and will be of particular importance. Both battery and liquid hydrogen powered fuel cell technology will not be sufficiently matured to allow the realization of a fully electric regional aircraft within the next decade. Instead, an intermediate step will be required to significantly reduce GHG emissions already by 2035. The development of a hybrid-electric propulsion system for regional aircraft with at least 50% hybridization represents this very challenging, yet achievable intermediate step and can allow for a mission fuel burn reduction by at least 50% compared to 2020 state-of-the-art regional aircraft. A thermal engine that allows for usage of 100% sustainable aviation fuel, will allow to reduce lifecycle GHG emissions by 90% and thus close to zero. The proposed project AMBER (innovAtive deMonstrator for hyBrid-Electric Regional application) addresses this aspect and pursues the maturation of hybrid-electric key components and the validation of a product-representative parallel hybridelectric propulsion system architecture, fuel cell based, for next-generation regional aircraft with EIS by 2035 to meet the ambitious environmental goals set out in SRIA and the Clean Aviation topic call.
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