Search results

Your Search

Sort Options

(1 - 4 of 4)

Marciello, M.; Cusati, V.; Nicolosi, F.; Saavedra-Rubio, K.; Pierrat, E.; Thonemann, N.; Laurent, A. 2024

Evaluating the economic landscape of hybrid-electric regional aircraft: a cost analysis across three time horizons

Article / Letter to editor

under embargo until 2025-01-16

This article presents the results of a prospective cost analysis of future regional aviation solutions, specifically focusing on hybrid-electric regional aircraft for 50 passengers. The study spans three time horizons (short term, medium term, long term) and employs a validated workflow to estimate costs for various solutions, including conventional, hybrid-electric, and hydrogen-based architectures. A specialized cost model is introduced to assess the electric components of the powertrain, emphasizing maintenance expenses and energy costs. Despite the environmental promise of hybrid and electric solutions, the results reveal significantly higher direct operating costs (up to 69.8%) compared to conventional options. The study highlights the importance of targeted policies to incentivize sustainable alternatives, suggesting potential solutions such as discouraging kerosene-based aircraft and promoting sustainable aviation fuel. These insights provide valuable guidance for industry stakeholders navigating the path toward a more sustainable and economically viable aviation future.

Show less

Thonemann, N.; Pierrat, E.; Dudka, K.M.; Saavedra-Rubio, K.; Tromer Dragsdahl, A.L.S.; Laurent, A. 2024

Towards sustainable regional aviation: environmental potential of hybrid-electric aircraft and alternative fuels

Article / Letter to editor

open access

The aviation sector needs to reduce its environmental impacts, like climate change and air pollution. New hybrid-electric aircraft concepts may contribute to abating part of these impacts. But to... Show moreThe aviation sector needs to reduce its environmental impacts, like climate change and air pollution. New hybrid-electric aircraft concepts may contribute to abating part of these impacts. But to what extent and under which conditions? This study addresses these questions in the context of regional aviation and identifies technologies and concrete actions required for more environmentally sustainable aviation. The environmental impacts of emerging hybrid-electric aircraft configurations deployed in 2030, 2040, and 2050 have been comprehensively quantified using prospective life cycle assessment. The entire life cycle of the conventional and hybrid-electric aircraft configurations was encompassed, covering various technologies and systems like batteries, fuel cells, hydrogen, and selected alternative aviation fuel (AAF) systems. For these elements, detailed life cycle inventories stemming from primary data, literature, and prospective environmental databases were used, and uncertainty was evaluated. Results showed that hybrid-electric aircraft with Li-ion batteries appear as a promising transition technology in the short-term while aircraft propelled by fuel cells using hydrogen from electrolysis yield important environmental benefits relative to conventional aircraft in longer time horizons. In contrast, the studied AAFs present little or no environmental benefits when considering environmental impacts holistically, demonstrating the need to revise existing AAF frameworks and incentives globally. Environmental burden-shifting from flight emissions in conventional aircraft systems to airport operations and aircraft manufacturing in hybrid-electric aircraft is also observed in the results, thus calling for strengthened support to airports in their sustainability management and increased integration of ecodesign practices in future aircraft design and development. Show less

Pierrat, E.; Dorber, M.; Graaf, I.de; Laurent, A.; Hauschild, M.Z.; Rygaard, M.; Barbarossa, V. 2023

Multicompartment depletion factors for water consumption on a global scale

Article / Letter to editor

open access

Pierrat, E.; Barbarossa, V.; Nunez, M.; Scherer, L.A.; Link, A.; Damiani, M.; ... ; Dorber, M. 2023

Global water consumption impacts on riverine fish species richness in Life Cycle Assessment

Article / Letter to editor

open access

Reduced river discharge and flow regulation are significant threats to freshwater biodiversity. An accurate representation of potential damage of water consumption on freshwater biodiversity is... Show moreReduced river discharge and flow regulation are significant threats to freshwater biodiversity. An accurate representation of potential damage of water consumption on freshwater biodiversity is required to quantify and compare the environmental impacts of global value chains. The effect of discharge reduction on fish species richness was previously modeled in life cycle impact assessment, but models were limited by the restricted geographical scope of underlying species-discharge relationships and the small number of species data. Here, we propose a model based on a novel regionalized species-discharge relationship (SDR). Our SDR-based model covers 88 % of the global landmass (2320 river basins worldwide excluding deserts and permanently frozen areas) and is based on a global dataset of 11,450 riverine fish species, simulated river discharge, elevation, and climate zones. We performed 10-fold cross-validation to select the best set of predictors and validated the obtained SDRs based on observed discharge data. Our model performed better than previous SDRs employed in life cycle impact assessment (Kling-Gupta efficiency coefficient about 4 times larger). We provide both marginal and average models with their uncertainty ranges for assessing scenarios of small and large-scale water consumption, respectively, and include regional and global species loss. We conducted an illustrative case study to showcase the method's applicability and highlight the differences with the currently used approach. Our models are useful for supporting sustainable water consumption and riverine fish biodiversity conservation decisions. They enable a more specific, reliable, and complete impact assessment by differentiating impacts Show less

Leiden University Scholarly Publications

Your Search

Enabled Filters

Sort Options

Refine Results

Resource Type

Availability

Creation Date

Faculty

Collection

Author

Language

Search results