Towards Zero-Emission in Air Transportation in Scandinavia

Paper i proceeding, 2023

The Scandinavian region mixes several interesting features. Metropolitan and urban areas with relatively high population density coexist next to vast but sparsely populated areas; modern ground infrastructures connect larger cities, but smaller communities are less efficiently served; geographical hinders such as mountains, jagged coast lines, lakes and the Baltic Sea further complicate transportation across the region. Previous work has studied how the emergence of new eco-friendly air vehicles designed for shorter routes could stimulate efficient and profitable regional operations in Sweden, especially if they leverage currently underutilized and paid-for airports. Using a purposely developed demand model, forecasts were created to study the changes in mode choice as a result of new regional flights between underserved airports. The idea was that the introduction of environmentally-friendly aircraft would enable revitalizing new routes. In the present paper, the work has been further expanded to broaden the perspective beyond the Swedish borders, taking into consideration also neighbouring countries. To achieve this, regional air transportation demand models were needed for both Norway and Finland. Then, a future scenario is considered to investigate how different sustainable aircraft solutions impact the domestic air transportation in the Scandinavian countries, comparing both potential and applicability of adopting Sustainable Air Fuel, electric or hydrogen fuelled propulsion systems.