When we talk about aviation sustainability, the first thing that usually comes to mind is propulsion technologies or new aircraft designs.

But there are other ways to lower the environmental footprint of flying. Some are even hidden in plain sight!

Today we bring you the story of a company doing its bit to make aviation more sustainable, but in a rather original way: GenPhoenix makes Eleather, which is an innovative lightweight material that can be found on many aircraft seats.

Eleather is actually made by upcycling organic leather scraps, preventing them from going to a landfill (and liberating methane) while, at the same time, helping bring down weight onboard the aircraft, with the related savings in fuel and emissions.

Lisa Conway, Chief Revenue Officer at GenPhoenix, has been on the podcast to share all the details about this interesting technology, which you may have already been using, even without noticing!

Tune in for a fascinating conversation about this segment of the industry that operates at the crossroads between sustainability and passenger experience!

Ivar Aune is the CEO of SiriNor, a company working on an electric jet engine.

Yes, you read that right! While most electric aircraft projects aim to power a propeller, SiriNor is going for the very technology that powers most of today’s commercial aviation industry.

After all, a modern jet engine works by making a turbine spin. But while conventional jets rely on a combustion process that produces very high temperatures, SiriNor aims to replace that bit with an electrically-powered mechanism.

The result: cheaper, easier to build engines which are as performing as conventional ones.

All of this is still some time into the future, since SiriNor is still, by most measures, a young startup. However, Ivar’s team has already tested successfully one of its electric jet engines on the ground and it is aiming to have some certified and commercially-ready models for UAVs and ground-effect-vehicles within the next couple of years.

If this sounds ambitious, you haven’t heard it all yet, because the ultimate goal is to be able to apply the electric jet engine technology to larger aircraft, potentially even the A320/B737-sized airliners that are the workhorses of today’s aviation industry.

A rather tall order, indeed, but Ivar, who spend the earlier part of his career in the Norwegian oil and gas industry, has no doubts about the need for the aviation industry to make bold bets if it is to remain, over the next decades, the engine of growth that it has been to this day.

So tune in for a fascinating conversation about a truly promising, and rather intriguing, technology that has been, pretty much, kept under wraps until very recently!

Wizz Air takes pride in having the lowest carbon footprint per passenger and kilometer in the airline industry, 52g, number that it expects to bring further down as it renews the fleet with larger, denser and more efficient aircraft.

But fleet renewal alone won’t do the trick. In fact, “fleet” is just one of the three “Fs” that the pan-European ultra-low-cost airline relies on to get to Net Zero by 2050, even in a context of growing air traffic.

“Footprint”, that is, efficiency improvements in the way aircraft are operates, is another, relatively minor “F” in this vision. But the bulk of the carbon reduction will rest upon the massive use of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF).

Since production of SAF is currently small, Wizz Air has decided to take a proactive stance and become a direct investor in a number of innovative SAF projects, one of the most promising of which is Firefly, a British startup that turns sewage into SAF.

In this episode of the podcast, Yvonne Moynihan, head of ESG and sustainability at Wizz Air, and James Hygate OBE, founder and CEO of Firefly, share the (virtual) stage to explain this project in detail.

We will talk about how Firefly technology works, how scalable it is and how does this project fit into Wizz Air’s SAF-sourcing ans well as in the airline’s broader decarbonization plans.

Tune in for a fascinating chat about one of the most interesting SAF projects right now in Europe and how it will help Wizz Air strengthen its sustainability credentials even further…