How will we achieve carbon-neutral flight in future?

They emit must be systematically stored underground. This is the most economical of various approaches that ETH researchers have compared in detail. It is politically agreed and necessary for climate protection reasons that our entire economy becomes climate-neutral in the coming decades - and that applies to air travel, too. This is a technically feasible goal, and there are numerous ways to achieve it. ETH Professor Marco Mazzotti and his team have now compared the options that appear to be the easiest to implement in the short and medium term and evaluated them according to factors such as cost-effectiveness. The ETH researchers conclude that the most favourable option is to continue powering aircraft with fossil fuels in future, but then remove the associated CO₂ emissions from the atmosphere using CO₂ capture plants and store that CO₂ permanently underground (carbon capture and storage, CCS). "The necessary technology already exists, and underground storage facilities have been operating for years in the North Sea and elsewhere," says Viola Becattini, a postdoc in Mazzotti's group and the study's first author.