18 September 2023:  The Governing Board of the Clean Aviation Joint Undertaking has approved €380 million for an additional eight new projects to accelerate aviation’s trajectory towards climate neutrality.

As a reminder the Clean Aviation Joint Undertaking is a European Union research and innovation programme for transforming aviation towards a sustainable and climate-neutral future. It is a European public-private partnership between the European Commission through Horizon Europe [1], the EU research and innovation programme, and the European aeronautics industry. It has a budget of €4.1 billion divided into €1.7 billion in EU funding and no less than €2.4 billion in private funding.

The Governing Board of Clean Aviation has recently approved €380 million, including €152 million in EU funding, for eight daring Clean Aviation projects to pave the way for highly efficient aircraft by 2035.

These projects will complement those already funded under Clean Aviation’s first call for proposals and prepare all the necessary elements for ground and flight test activities starting in 2026. They will be helpful to reduce net emissions of GHG by 30 per cent for commercial flights.

The projects will have to cover the three main thrusts elaborated from the Clean Aviation Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda:

• EU funding for hydrogen-powered aircraft (representing €86 million)
• EU funding for hybrid-electric regional aircraft (representing €33 million)
• EU funding for short and medium range aircraft (representing €33 million)

In addition to this funding, a further €0.75 million is dedicated to impact monitoring of EU aviation research and innovation.