Some might argue that achieving a sustainable future for aviation creates a systems engineering challenge. Sustainability and broader fuel efficiency-related priorities have been core to AIAA’s Aeronautics Domain since its initial launch in 2021.
Sustainable aviation must be safe, clean, quiet, efficient, economical, globally operable, and marketable, providing a value-added air transportation system for society that grows to meet global demand and improve quality of life for more people worldwide. Addressing climate change is a component, but not the sole challenge to realizing this future. A key reality across all society and economic sectors is an energy transition away from fossil fuels. How aviation addresses this energy transition, in harmony with other sectors, has shaped conversations throughout AIAA AVIATION Forum 2026. Several programs were hosted by relevant groups including: Sustainability Aerospace Integrated Engagement Committee (Sustainability AIEC), Electric Propulsion and Advanced Technologies Symposium (EPATS), H2-Aero, NASA’s Advanced Aircraft Concepts for Environmental Sustainability Initiative (AACES), and the U.S. Department of Energy Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E).
Following the forum, I interviewed three stakeholders about sustainability in aviation and the role of energy research and development:
- Rich Wahls, retired Sustainable Flight National Partnership Mission Integration Manager, NASA Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate
- Hervé Morvan, Chief of Future Platforms at Rolls-Royce
- Phillip Ansell, Chair of AIAA’s Sustainability Aerospace Integrated Engagement Committee and Associate Professor of Aerospace Engineering at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Defining Sustainability
“True sustainability lies at the intersection of societal needs, economic realities, and environmental friendliness. We want to meet the needs of the present without compromising the needs of the future, in aviation and across all aspects of our lives.” – Rich Wahls
Wahls’ definition, framed as a Venn diagram, “where society, economic, and environmental needs come together at the intersection,” addresses a vision of sustainability encompassing the tools, processes, technologies, systems, and operations to sustain the future of aviation. This beyond-climate-only definition has served as a useful philosophical framework for AIAA members engaged with the Sustainability AIEC, as well as the previous Green Engineering and Carbon Emissions and Sustainability initiatives.
Implementing innovative tools and processes on an airplane pursuant to these sustainability priorities requires the ability to counterbalance novelty, direct and indirect benefits, and trade-offs. Yet innovation also requires an acknowledgement of context, and with it the need to consider other sectors and systems that will impact and be impacted by decisions made in the aviation industry. When innovators describe the ideal scale or a total addressable market, aviation stakeholders spin a globe.
Value Chains and Risk
“There’s a chicken and egg problem: until airlines know enough airports can reliably supply an alternative energy solution, it’s too risky for industry to invest in and launch an alternative-fueled, novel aircraft product. How does a realistic transition become practical? Research addresses these challenges by exploring options, reducing risks, and the findings presented at AIAA forums assist the aerospace community identifying viable paths forward.” – Rich Wahls
Technology can serve as an enabler for innovation, but only when clarity about the value chain is a core component to conversations and agreements. Since operationalizing innovation in aviation depends on additional industrial sectors, mapping and modeling the series and scale of complexity in decisions is pivotal. Articulating clear benefits among different choices and investments can be persuasive to formal and adjacent members of the aviation ecosystem.
A Shift in Mindset
“Sustainability needs to stretch beyond the environment and greening to deliver cashable benefits across the chain of stakeholders involved. Technology is an enabler for innovation, and the ability to track value – as opposed to solely costs – and dependencies, including beyond what is directly under our control in the aviation industry, is the key to unlocking decisions, mobilizing support and delivering change. Some of the decarbonization challenges we face are linked to a lack of clarity on the value chain by all concerned.” – Hervé Morvan
All interviewed agree it is important to engage jointly in questions about widgets that can advance technology while also thinking deeply about how to make the broader ecosystem functional. The latter concern requires interactions with multiple groups of stakeholders, many of whom may be new faces to the aviation community. The global connectivity of aeronautics can create additional interdependency challenges that make innovation and energy transition challenging because innovation and strategic harmonization at the global level is inevitably required.
“There has been a shift in mindset from sustainability as an implicit thing that happens, to something that requires a more purposeful undertaking. As people realize that this is a much harder problem, requiring new tools, capabilities, and partnerships, sustainability has become an intimidating prospect for many. Almost as an answer to this lofty challenge, though, the reception for open conversations about the technological place for sustainability and [interest in] cryogenic fuels at AVIATION [Forum] 2026 was amazing.” – Phil Ansell
The aerospace industry converges on certain positions and ideas regarding fuel options and aircraft design for shifting reasons over time, but sustainability, increased efficiency, alternative fuel capacity, and cost considerations are evergreen. Additionally, as research and development is successful in advancing technologies, conversations about previously sidelined innovations can be revived. Finding ways to make incremental change is key as a milestone to future change at scale. With global shift as the goal and the costs for that shift being so significant that quick wholesale shifts appear too risky, what’s most important is making a strong case that builds on momentum and empirical strength. That way, change becomes not only a good idea, but a necessary one – which can be sustained for the foreseeable future.
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