Sustainability and Environment

At the beginning of 2021 NLR initiated an ambitious project with a view to flying its HYDRA-2 drone using liquid hydrogen in a full composite tank by the end of 2022. As the end of this year approaches, the NLR project team looks back at the challenges faced and celebrates its achievements.

The Dutch aviation sector is investing in clean and smart mobility. To do that, various consortiums under the auspices of the sector organisations LRN and NAG have submitted ten project proposals to the Netherlands Enterprise Agency, RVO. Royal NLR has played an essential role in that. Given the aim of improved sustainability in aviation, the sector wants to use these proposals to obtain access to the Mobility Fund. In concrete terms, the proposals range from applications of new lightweight materials and the use of digital techniques through to developing electrically powered flight and using greener aviation fuels.

The amounts of sustainable aviation fuels being produced by 2050 from the biobased feedstocks that will be available in the Netherlands can only meet a fraction of the anticipated fuel demand. The supply potential for synthetic kerosene, produced using CO₂ that has been recycled or captured from the atmosphere and renewable electricity, is larger and may be sufficient. However, that depends heavily on the amount of excess renewable electricity allocated to the aviation sector.