The seeds that would become Clean Sky were planted in the year 2000, when the European Commission set up the Advisory Council for Aviation Research and innovation in Europe (ACARE). The need for reducing aviation’s environmental footprint had become clear, and Clean Sky would soon become the European Commission’s flagship public-private partnership for developing sustainable aviation technologies.
The purpose of ACARE was to provide guidelines that could be commonly accepted across Europe's aviation sector as a basis for moving the industry towards greener standards, increased industrial competitiveness and societal benefits.
Stakeholders from a wide range of backgrounds were invited to join ACARE - from the manufacturing industry, airports, airlines, regulators, service providers, research establishments and academia.
Its members finally developed a Strategic Research Agenda (SRA) for European aeronautics, ‘a roadmap outlining the strategic orientations which should be taken if Europe is to meet society's needs for aviation as a public mode of transport as well as noise and emissions reduction requirements in a sustainable way’.
A roadmap outlining the strategic orientations which should be taken if Europe is to meet society's needs for aviation as a public mode of transport as well as noise and emissions reduction requirements in a sustainable way
A report was published in 2001 by ACARE that outlined a 2020 vision for the European Air Transport System, which highlighted the importance of developing environmentally-friendly aviation technologies.
Clean Sky Joint Undertaking was subsequently created as an act of the European Council in 2007 in the first wave of Joint Technology Initiatives (JTI). The new public-private-partnership was tasked with implementing an ambitious programme of green and innovative technology development.
JTIs are a key mechanism for performing research at EU level; they are long-term Public-Private Partnerships; and are managed within dedicated structures based on Article 187 TFEU (ex Article 171 TEC). The EU explains that JTIs ‘support large-scale multinational research activities in areas of major interest to European industrial competitiveness and issues of high societal relevance’.
Support large-scale multinational research activities in areas of major interest to European industrial competitiveness and issues of high societal relevance
The salient term here is ‘long-term’. For it’s the relatively long-term nature of JTIs that synchronises with the extended timescales that are typically required in commercial aviation – across research, design, technology demonstrators (in the case of Clean Sky), prototyping, development, manufacture, certification and deployment into service.
The first Clean Sky programme ended in 2014, having exceeded the expectations set in 2007. To read more about the results of the first years of Clean Sky, click here.
The successor to Clean Sky, the Clean Sky 2 Joint Undertaking, was launched in 2014 and will end in 2024. The final Call for Proposals was launched in January 2020 and is now closed. Read more about Clean Sky 2’s results here.
The European Partnership for Clean Aviation, or the Clean Aviation Joint Undertaking, launched in 2021. Building on the success of Clean Sky and Clean Sky 2, it will endeavour to explore cutting-edge technologies that will make aviation climate-neutral by 2050. Learn more about Clean Aviation here.