Rolls-Royce

Designing the future of sustainable power and helping business aviation customers to meet green goals

Rolls-Royce’s electric Spirit of Innovation

If the challenges of the past few years have compelled some to consider a better future, so have they driven innovation and excellence among the best of us. Among the group pushing to do better, certainly, is Rolls-Royce, which has used the recent turmoil to redouble efforts in advancing green technologies across its many platforms. Long an industry pioneer at the forefront of power technology, the storied firm is strongly focused on its goal of becoming a net zero company in terms of carbon impacts. Responsibly racing toward meeting this goal, Rolls-Royce is looking to ensure that its new products will be compatible with net zero by 2030 and that all of its in-use products will be compatible with net zero by 2050. For its aviation sector, part of that solution is a new engine that can use Sustainable Aviation Fuels (SAFs)—but, ambitiously, as Rolls-Royce expects its current products to be in use for several decades, it has pledged to have proven all of its in-production commercial and business jet aeroengines to be compatible with 100% SAFs by 2023. This is an incredible leap forward for aviation as a whole as it will mean that two-thirds of Rolls-Royce Trent engine fleet and three-fifths of its business jet fleet currently in service will be SAF-ready, helping customers to meet their own goals to reduce climate impacts. Further helping customers, Rolls-Royce this summer announced that it was launching a new SAFinity service, which will allow business aviation customers to operate flights in a carbon-neutral way. As a first of its kind, this flexible service combines independently verified sustainability projects with a direct investment in Sustainable Aviation Fuel, aiming to further support and accelerate the availability and use of SAF in the aviation industry. As part of the service, Rolls-Royce and Shell extended their more than a century of cooperation by partnering in a commitment to support decarbonization of the aviation industry, with Shell as the sole SAF supplier for SAFinity. In recent testing, Rolls-Royce demonstrated that current engines for large civil and business jet applications can operate with 100% SAF as a full “drop-in” option. At present, SAF is only certified for blends of up to 50% with conventional jet fuel, and Rolls-Royce’s results are a step forward in moving SAF towards certification. Unblended SAFs could significantly reduce net CO2 lifecycle emissions compared to the conventional jet fuel currently in use. SPIRIT OF INNOVATION

SAFs are only part of Rolls-Royce’s greater efforts. The company also is exploring all-electric urban air mobility and regional aviation, hybrid-electric systems, fuel cells, microgrids and even small modular nuclear reactors. One of the more exciting manifestations of Rolls-Royce’s progress was the flight this summer of the company’s Spirit of Innovation electric aircraft. Working together since 2018, a diverse team of experts in aviation, motorsports, research institutes and academia assembled on the morning of September 15 at Boscombe Down Airfield in England and watched their sublimely elegant creation take flight. The all-electric plane, dubbed Spirit of Innovation, was powered by a groundbreaking new battery and electric propulsion system, and its first flight was a resounding success—and a hint of progress to come. As the UK’s Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng said after the flight, “The first flight of Rolls-Royce’s revolutionary Spirit of Innovation aircraft signals a huge step forward in the global transition to cleaner forms of flight.”

Rolls-Royce’s CEO Warren East concurred, offering that the flight was just one example of the company’s focus “on producing the technology breakthroughs society needs to decarbonize transport across air, land and sea.” Technologically brilliant and aesthetically pleasing, the aptly named Spirit of Innovation is a positive sign of things to come, from a company that long has set the standard for elegance and cutting-edge performance.

Find out more about Rolls-Royce’s pioneering pathway to net zero at rolls-royce.com

The aptly named Spirit of Innovation is a positive sign of things to come