Purpose

The aviation sector faces increasing pressure to decarbonize with growing global demand for air travel. Hybrid-electric aircraft is emerging as a promising pathway towards low-emission regional aviation. This study aims to explore the prospective life-cycle environmental impacts of a hybrid-electric aircraft across different flight missions and comparing to conventional regional aviation.

Methods

This study presents a cradle-to-grave prospective life cycle assessment of a 30-seater hybrid-electric aircraft, assumed to be produced in 2035 and operated until 2065, accounting for future changes over its lifetime. Industrial data were used for the modeling. Ten mission distances (100-700 km) were modeled to evaluate environmental performance across operational ranges.

Results and discussion

Across all flight missions, the use phase dominates life-cycle impacts. Among the missions assessed, the 260 km flight performs best in terms of climate and the longer-term crustal scarcity indicator, while the 289 km flight mission performs best in terms of particulate matter impacts. Longer missions with hybrid operation exhibit higher climate, particulate matter impacts, as well as crustal scarcity indicator because the fuel combustion increases. In contrast, results for abiotic resource depletion show a decreasing trend with increasing mission distance, driven by less frequent battery replacement. Overall, the study indicates that regional hybrid-electric aviation has promising environmental performance. The results and the sensitivity analysis highlight the need for advances in battery-specific energy and cycle life, as well as electricity decarbonization.

Conclusion

This study showed the promising environmental performance of hybrid-electric aviation, especially when operated in full-electric mode. Future research should focus on improving the battery performance to support the development of environmentally friendly hybrid-electric aviation. Supportive policy frameworks are also required for alternative aviation fuels to fully realize the environmental potential of regional hybrid-electric aviation.