Sub-Arctic Kvarken region wants to fly electric
The Kvarken region, in yellow
At the time of writing these lines, it is clear that most projects involving electric aviation concepts are limited, for the time being, to small size aircraft with relatively short ranges.
There are a number of reasons for this, basically the fact that battery technology has not yet managed to deliver the sort of energy density required to do the heavy lifting over long distances economically (for more on this, let me suggest this podcast episode I did with propulsion expert Bjorn Fehrm)
But there are some use cases where electric planes can, already today, a feasible carbon-free air travel option .
The Kvarken region, is one of those natural regions in Europe that straddle national borders. The two sides of the upper Gulf of Bothnia, just south of the Arctic circle. The regional authorities have long been thinking how to strengthen the links between the Swedish and Finnish sides of the gulf.
Add to this the well known Nordic focus on sustainability and innovation as well as the population distribution in this part of the world and you can guess where this is going…(something noted also in this recent article about electric aviation in the Nordics that appeared on Bloomberg).
Kvarken Council is exploring the possibilities that electric aviation offers to improve connectivity in the region, this follows another initiative to launch a brand new ferry that will connect the Vaasa (FInland) and Umea (Sweden), not yet electric but lowering emissions through a combination of LNG, biogas and some other technologies to make its operation more energetically-efficient.
The aptly named FAIR programme (which stands for Finding Innovations to Accelerate Implementation of Electric Regional Aviation) has been granted EU funds to evaluate the best potential uses of electric aviation in this context, not just from communications across the sea but also throughout the whole hinterland of this sparsely populated region. Most of the benefits would be derived from the possibility of establishing economically-viable direct point to point connections without having to transit though regional and national hubs (with the distances involved in the Nordics, this often means hours of travel).
As part of this initiative, Kvarken Council is consulting with different stakeholders and industry players, for example, the Helsinki Electric Aviation Association, Heart Aerospace, a promising Swedish startup that is developing an all-electric 19-seater airliner, RISE, a Swedish organization that coordinates efforts in the field of green aviation, and several universities in Finland and Sweden.
“Rome was not built in a day and this project will not deliver all the final answers, but we are now on the go and the ball is set rolling.”
In this regard, FAIR organized recently a webinar in which participants could learn some interesting details about the Heart Aerospace project and how it fits into this general picture. For example, operational costs of the 19 seater it is designing are expected to be 1/3 of those of conventionally powered aircraft, making it possible to operate profitably at smaller scale. If a given route required enough demand to fill a 70 seater in order to allow for a financially sound operation, everything else equal, with electric aircraft it will be enough to have demand to fill a 19 seats, making it possible to open more direct connections or to have multiple frequencies on a given route.
Also of note, is the fact there are about 300 potential routes in Scandinavia that are below the 400km mark that could be a good fit for this future aircraft.
The Nordics is certainly a region to pay attention to when it comes to developments in sustainable aviation. You can also check our round-up of the Norwegian sustainable aviation strategy, a first in a series of close-ups on the different countries’ strategies and initiatives in these areas.