The European Union’s Clean Aviation Joint Undertaking has awarded €945 million ($1.1 billion) in government funding to 12 projects aimed at decarbonizing commercial air travel, the organization announced this week. Award recipients for this third funding round, which followed a call for proposals in February, include several major aerospace manufacturers that are developing novel aircraft and propulsion concepts.
According to the governing board of the Clean Aviation Joint Undertaking, the selected projects could reduce greenhouse gas emissions for commercial aviation by no less than 30% over the next 10 years. Award teams will begin work under their Clean Aviation contracts in early 2026 and are expected to flight-test their creations in 2028 and 2029.
Of the €945 million in EU funding, the Clean Aviation initiative awarded €199 million to three projects dealing with ultra-efficient short-medium range aircraft technologies, €144 million for three ultra-efficient regional aircraft technologies, €20 million for four projects categorized as “fast track areas,” and €15 million for transversal projects dedicated to aircraft concept integration (ACI) and impact assessment.
Pratt & Whitney, ATR, and Safran Go Regional
The Call 3 awards also marked the launch of a new collaboration between Europe and Canada; the Powerplant Hybrid Application for Regional Segment (PHARES) consortium led by Pratt & Whitney Canada was selected to receive €69 million. For the PHARES project, Pratt & Whitney Canada will design and integrate a hybrid-electric propulsion demonstrator featuring an advanced PW127XT-derivative turboprop engine connected to a 250-kilowatt electric motor drive system supplied by Collins Aerospace, its sister company under RTX.
Another project in the ultra-efficient regional aircraft category is ATR’s Demonstrator of an Electrified Modern Efficient Transport Regional Aircraft, or Demetra. The project will use an ATR 72-600 flying testbed to demonstrate technologies that the Franco-Italian aircraft manufacturer has been developing for its flagship Hybrid-Electric Regional Aircraft Concept for Low Emissions (“Heracles”).
ATR also received a second award in the ACI category for the Heracles project, which aims to fly a hybrid-electric regional aircraft by 2030. Earlier this year, Pratt & Whitney Canada partnered with ATR to advance hybrid-electric propulsion technologies for regional turboprops such as the ATR 72-600.
“We are honored to lead this transformative effort with the support of Clean Aviation,” said ATR CEO Nathalie Tarnaud Laude. “This is more than a technological demonstration; it’s a bold commitment to the future of regional aviation. By flying the world’s first hybrid-electric regional aircraft by 2030, we aim to further demonstrate that sustainability and connectivity can go hand in hand. These projects build on our unmatched legacy of fuel efficiency and position ATR at the forefront of the next generation of aviation.”
Also in the regional category is a project led by Safran Electrical & Power called On-Board Systems Relevant for Hybridization of Regional Aircraft (“Osyrys”). Safran recently obtained EASA certification for the 125-kilowatt EngineUs electric motor it developed for new air mobility applications, including VoltAero’s Cassio family of hybrid-electric aircraft and E20 eVTOL model being developed by China's TCab Tech.
Ultra-efficient, Short- to Medium-range Aircraft
The ultra-efficient, short-medium range aircraft category includes Safran Aircraft Engines’ Technology and Knowledge for European Open Fan Flight (“Take Off”), which builds on earlier work the French company has done for the Clean Aviation initiative to advance open-fan engine technology.
Other projects to receive awards in this category include the Airbus-led large-scale integration demonstrator of hybrid electrical architecture (“Leia”), and Rolls-Royce’s ultra novel and innovative fully integrated engine demonstrations (“Unified”). Airbus also received a second award for short- to medium-range aircraft configuration and integration under the ACI category.
‘Fast-track Areas’ Support Decarbonization Tech
Clean Aviation recently introduced the “fast-track areas” (FTA) category for technologies that it says are “designed to de-risk alternative or complementary technical solutions,” the organization said. “They put the focus on proposals that can rapidly advance impactful technologies to the development phase and are closely connected to the short-medium range and regional aircraft coordinators.”
Four projects received awards under the FTA category, including a consortium led by French company Ascendance called Lithium-based Innovation for Modular Energy (LIME), which aims to develop and demonstrate an aviation-grade battery system for hybrid-electric propulsion systems.
Spanish electronics specialist Skylife Engineering was selected to demonstrate its Power4Air technology that improves the safety and certifiability of power electronics in electric aircraft. Power4Air aims to detect and prevent dangerous electrical faults and reduce electromagnetic noise and interference, making electronic systems more reliable.
Also in the FTA category is a project led by the Munich, Germany-based Fraunhofer Institute called Modular, Scalable and Technology-Open Design for Future Aviation Batteries (“Modabat”). In Italy, the University of Campania Luigi Vanvitelli received an FTA award for the Crystar project—short for “certification roadmap to yield an optimal and safety methodology of crashworthiness for an integrated cryogenic tank for liquid hydrogen storage on board of future aircraft.”
Honeywell Seeks to Transform Manufacturing
In the UK, a consortium led by Honeywell launched a research and development program to apply artificial intelligence (AI) and additive manufacturing (AM) to improve aerospace production processes. The country's Aerospace Technology Institute is supporting the Project Strata with £14.1 million ($19 million) in funding.
The Strata consortium will focus on the development of five innovative components that are part of aircraft environmental control and cabin pressure control systems. The group also includes 3T Additive Manufacturing, BeyondMath, Qdot Technology, and the Oxford Thermofluids Institute.
AI and other technologies will be applied to support simulations and modeling that the partners believe could accelerate innovation cycles for these systems. Honeywell aims to enhance component design for thermal and flow optimization with faster iteration cycles, with the aim of achieving the TRL6 maturity level that can be applied for manufacturing and assembly by UK-based suppliers.
The work will also assess opportunities to make manufacturing more efficient while reducing Scope 3 emissions emanating from the supply chain and post-production operations, through new approaches to manufacturing aerospace parts. The project aims to reduce fuel consumption through improvements in thermal management systems and will utilize a carbon roadmap developed by 3T to identify the most carbon-intensive processes across operations.
The results from this exercise should inform a series of reduce, reuse, and recycle strategies alongside a digital transformation program to understand and take action on real-time energy and carbon data. Any improvements will be documented through the formal lifecycle carbon analysis process.
The Strata partners are looking to optimize AM parameters in pursuit of improvements in efficiency and material selection, as well as post-manufacturing processing and testing. The project's deliverables should include enhanced knowledge about digitization and automation for AM-based supply chains.
One aspect to the Strata project, which runs through to May 2028, is the advancement of thermal management technology that would reduce energy requirements for heating and cooling the next generation of airliners. The partners are also looking to reduce energy consumption as part of efforts to achieve net-zero carbon aerospace manufacturing.