Investment in green technologies must include aerospace

The importance of investment in green technologies is widely recognized, as is the importance of reducing the impact of civil aviation on climate change, but recently these two ideas have not been connected in Canada. The federally supported Green Aviation Research and Development Network (GARDN), which was funded from 2009-2021, has not yet been replaced with anything comparable, despite the increasing urgency of the issue. Valuable capabilities in industry and universities developed through GARDN projects are being refocused elsewhere. Further investment toward the development of technologies that reduce the impact of aviation on climate change is urgently needed in industry, universities, and the National Research Council (NRC). To ensure the sustainability of the aviation sector, new fuels, such as biofuels and hydrogen, are needed to replace fossil fuels, and the efficiency of aircraft and engines must be improved to reduce the energy needed and to mitigate the cost increases associated with the new fuels. Many promising technologies exist with the potential to improve energy efficiency substantially, including new aircraft configurations such as strut-braced wing and blended wing-body aircraft as well as boundary-layer-ingesting engines, to name a few. A great deal of research and development (R&D) is needed to bring such technologies and new fuels to a level suitable for commercial application, and Canada has the expertise needed to be a world leader in this space if an adequate commitment is made to sustained funding. David Zingg is the University of Toronto distinguished professor of computational aerodynamics and sustainable aviation at the University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies. Photograph courtesy of David Zingg The lack of funding for green technologies in aviation is part of a larger problem in Canada. Many articles have been written about Canada’s declining productivity and inability to develop a thriving home-grown manufacturing sector. Usually, the discussion revolves around the idea that this poor performance is occurring despite the excellent research going on at Canadian universities, and the cause therefore is not inadequate investment in research, but lies elsewhere, for example in insufficient business investment. Let us examine this premise more closely. How strong is Canada’s performance in research in engineering and technology? According to the 2023 QS rankings, Canada’s leading university in engineering and technology ranked 27th in the world. Ten countries, including Switzerland, Netherlands, Singapore, and South Korea have universities ranked higher than any Canadian school in this category. This contrasts with, for example, life sciences and medicine, where Canada’s top-ranked university is 13th, and only three countries have schools ranked higher. Canada’s research support is prioritizing science over engineering, and this is contributing to our declining productivity. Canada’s performance in aerospace and mechanical engineering is even worse, ranking 38th, with 13 countries having higher ranked schools, including Belgium, Denmark, and Sweden. Given the strength and importance of Canada’s aerospace sector, this is simply unacceptable. For our aerospace sector to compete globally, it must be supported by a world-class research and development ecosystem, including both universities and the NRC. Investment in reducing the climate change impact of aviation is justified both by the need to reduce our emissions and by the importance of aerospace to the Canadian economy. Targeted federal investment is urgently needed to ensure that Canada’s aerospace sector can lead the way toward a sustainable aviation system and remain globally competitive. Moreover, in addition to spending a globally competitive percentage of its GDP on R&D, Canada needs a national research funding strategy that will enable our universities to conduct research in engineering and technology that is comparably ranked globally to that conducted in life sciences, natural sciences, and medicine. Such a strategy will pay immediate dividends in Canada’s productivity, initiating a culture change that will strengthen existing companies and lead to more successful startups. David Zingg is the University of Toronto distinguished professor of computational aerodynamics and sustainable aviation at the University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies, where he leads the Centre for Research in Sustainable Aviation. He held a Canada Research Chair in Computational Aerodynamics and Environmentally Friendly Aircraft Design from 2001-2015. The Hill Times