ENGLAND, CRAWLEY: Ten global airlines have joined forces with Boston Consulting Group (BCG) to raise funding for research and development work on technology for cutting air transport carbon emissions. The charitable non-profit Aviation Climate Taskforce (ACT), which intends to tap public, private, and philanthropic sources of capital, has been launched by the following carriers in partnership with BCG: Air Canada, Air France-KLM, American Airlines, Cathay Pacific Airways, Delta Air Lines, JetBlue Airways, Lufthansa, Southwest Airlines, United Airlines, and Virgin Atlantic Airways.

According to chief executive Tom Light, ACT aims to build a global innovation network distributing grants to fund R&D work that might not otherwise attract venture capital funding, as well as a forum for industry collaboration to scale its future adoption. It aims to get started by issuing approximately $2 million in grants in the first half of 2023 and will also be inviting other aviation leaders from around the world to join the group, which has been launched with an undisclosed amount of private funding.

“The challenge right now is that if you want things like green hydrogen and power-to-liquid synthetic fuels to be ready for use on a wider scale by 2030, then we need to acknowledge that many of these projects are not yet ready for private investment, and we must help get these ready in the next three to five years,” Light told AIN. “About half of the technologies we need aren’t invented yet or they are stuck in a lab. The future of aviation requires a huge amount of investment, so our mission is to fund world-class research that de-risks technology, getting it out of the technological death valley and into the higher technology readiness levels to attract institutional funding as soon as possible.”

Last week, Virgin Atlantic announced plans to conduct what it said will be the first net-zero transatlantic flight with an aircraft running solely on 100 percent sustainable aviation fuel. That flight will use one of the carrier’s Boeing 787 widebodies powered by Rolls-Royce Trent 1000 engines and will operate from London Heathrow Airport to New York John F. Kennedy Airport sometime before the end of 2023. The project will receive up to £1 million ($1.2 million) in financial support from the UK’s Department for Transport.