Life Cycle Assessment of Power-to-Liquid for Aviation: A Case Study of a Passenger Aircraft

Abstract

The aviation sector is estimated to require a widespread deployment of sustainable fuels next to developments in aircraft technology and improvements in operations and infrastructure to efficiently reduce its climate impact. A possible pathway for more sustainable aviation fuels could be fuel production using hydrogen via water electrolysis with renewable energy followed by Fischer-Tropsch synthesis, also known as Power-to-Liquid (PtL). In order to investigate whether this fuel pathway contributes to the reduction in environmental impacts, we conduct an environmental Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) compared to fossil fuel for the use in a narrow-body shortto medium-haul aircraft fleet. Within the LCA, the focus lies on the phases of fuel production and operation of the aircraft’s life cycle. Unlike most LCA studies in aviation, the impacts of the flight emissions are computed based on the aircraft characteristics and considering the geographic position and altitude of the aircraft for a global route network. Since the aircraft design is not affected by the fuel types under investigation, the aircraft production and end-of-life phases are not considered in the LCA. This contribution shows the potential of PtL for aviation in a well-to-wake environmental sustainability analysis considering climate change and nine additional impact categories.