For a given timeframe and airport, GREENPORT2050's basic assessment principle is to compare the environmental performance of two aircraft-traffic scenarios. The first scenario is a one-day flight schedule with Clean Sky 2 reference-technology aircraft in the relevant classes (long-range, short-/medium-range, and regional). The second scenario uses the same flight schedule, but in which (based on fleet replacement rates) Clean Sky 2 concept aircraft replace their reference-technology counterparts. The approach to quantify the environmental performance of an aircraft-traffic scenario consists of two steps. Firstly, a realistic simulation of aircraft traffic is conducted, yielding for each flight a complete trajectory in the airport’s local airspace. Secondly, the environmental contribution (in terms of noise, CO2 and NOx) is calculated per flight, based on its trajectory. These environmental contributions per flight are then aggregated to obtain the total environmental-impact results at airport level.
GREENPORT2050 carried out the second airport-level assessment in Clean Sky 2 TE. The first one was carried out in the Clean Sky 2 TE project CLAIRPORT. Hence, GREENPORT2050 capitalises on CLAIRPORT and considers the same set of airports (i.e. the European airports Amsterdam Airport Schiphol, Rome Fiumicino Airport, Stockholm Arlanda Airport, Hamburg Airport and Toulouse Blagnac Airport, as well as the generic airport CAEPport). The main steps in GREENPORT2050's assessment are:
1. Simulations and calculations
For every combination of aircraft-traffic scenario and airport, GREENPORT2050 firstly conducts a realistic simulation of aircraft movements at and around the airport. The simulation output contains for every flight a complete trajectory in the airport’s local airspace respecting the real airport operational procedures and rules. These individual trajectories are subsequently processed by noise and emissions models to calculate the associated noise and emissions. Depending on the aircraft type, either a model from industry (for its reference-technology or Clean Sky 2 concept aircraft) or a model from Royal NLR (for other aircraft than reference-technology or Clean Sky 2 concept aircraft) is used. In the final step, the individual noise and emissions results are aggregated to yield noise and emissions output per aircraft-traffic scenario.
Consistent with EU Directive 2002/49/EC and ICAO Doc 9889, this output includes:
- Lden and Lnight contours for significant noise levels: Surface area and population exposed;
- Total amount of CO2 and NOx emitted below 3,000 ft.
For an effective and efficient assessment process, GREENPORT2050 further developed and transformed the computation framework developed in CLAIRPORT.
2. Assessments
GREENPORT2050 carried out assessments up to 2050 (i.e. 2035, 2040, 2045 and 2050) for the aforementioned airports and in accordance with the process described in Step 1. These assessment results shall be disclosed as part of the public Clean Sky 2 TE report on the Second Global Assessment.
The activities carried out in GREENPORT2050 have been presented at conferences and reported in various (gold open access) publications.
