Building more sustainable aircrafts

The European aviation industry has set ambitious environmental protection goals for itself: by the year 2020, it not only wants to reduce emissions of gases harmful to the climate – carbon dioxide by 50 percent and nitrogen oxide by 80 percent – but it also wants to improve the life cycles of the aircrafts themselves. “Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)” is the term experts use to describe the systematic assessment of the adverse environmental impact of aircraft components in use. The analysis comprises all of the environmental impact that a product has caused throughout the course of its entire life cycle – from production to use to recycling or disposal.

Further information: cordis.europa.eu