Norway launches zero & low carbon aviation test center

Time to update our Norwegian green flying wrap-up because these has been rather eventful days for the Nordic country’s green aviation ecosystem.

This time it’s been the announcement that four Norwegian organisations are getting together to create a test and innovation center for zero- and low-emission aviation.

The Norwegian Civil Aviation Authority, Avinor (the country’s airport operator), the Federation of Norwegian Industries and SINTEF (a scientific research organisation based in the city of Trondheim) are the stakeholders of this project.

To be fair, a lot was going on already in the Norwegian green flight scene (check out for example, our podcast with Olav Mosvold Larsen, head of carbon reduction at Avinor), so this initiative I guess helps structure many of these ongoing initiatives. It seems that one of the benefits this new platform will provide will be in the form a “regulatory sandbox”, which will facilitate the testing of new technologies in more favourable conditions.

What is not clear is whether are there any linkages between the one being developed, also in Norway, by Wideroe, Rolls-Royce and Tecnam in order to launch an electric passenger aircraft with up to 19 seats.

This industry is currently going through an interesting stage, with multiple countries and regions vying to become a leading center of research in zero and low carbon aviation technologies, see for example the announcement on the same day that this project was unveiled in Norway of a similar project in the Southwest in England.

This remains a rather close-knit ecosystem, though, with several of its key players, such as, for example, Rolls-Royce, participating in several research and testing projects at the same time. Which makes sense, since all these initiatives are not exclusive of each other, rather the opposite, building the groundswell for the changes that are coming to commercial aviation.