A guideline for regional airports on investments in charging infrastructure

A new report within the FAIR project looks at what knowledge must be acquired to prepare regional airports for electric aircraft. And which moves that must be taken, to transfer this knowledge to actions and results.

The airports in the Kvarken-Nordland Region are interested in the prerequisites to receive electric aircraft at their airports. The FAIR-project group has visited several of the airports and discussed the development of electric aviation and the conditions at each airport.

The interest for the future of aviation and sustainability in general, and electric aircraft specifically, has been genuine among visited airports, says Arne Smedberg, CEO BioFuel Region. But there are a lot of unknowns and variables affecting an introduction, something that we have got a good insight to through these meetings.

To address these questions, a roadmap on the steps towards an investment has been developed. In addition, calculations have been made on three different flight routes in the region, with respect to charging effect needed at the airports and charging time at the tarmac.

There are a lot of similarities between Finland, Norway and Sweden when it comes to current infrastructure. However, how the airports are organized (ex. owner structures) are not identical. It has been of outmost importance for the report to have dialogues with different airports in respective countries.

By working cross border on these issues, we have created competence and networks between stakeholders, companies and public authorities with a particular interest in electric aviation. That has been of great value, states Kristin Frodahl Rognerud, coordinator in MidtSkandia.

This report is the result of a joint work package within FAIR by BioFuel Region and MidtSkandia and is aiming to act as a guideline for the airports interested to invest in charging infrastructure at airside. It also illustrates the understanding of the prerequisites and the differences between Norway, Sweden and Finland when it comes to ownership and possibilities to finance the infrastructure development.

The report can be downloaded at the Kvarken Council homepage.

Finding innovations to Accelerate the Implementation of Regional electric aviation

FAIR (Finding innovations to Accelerate the Implementation of electric Regional aviation) is a first step of preparing the Kvarken region for an early implementation of electric aviation.

The project’s partnership consists largely of actors in the Kvarken region, i.e. the counties of Ostrobothnia, South Ostrobothnia, and Central Ostrobothnia in Finland and the county of Västerbotten and municipality of Örnsköldsvik in Sweden. The geography of FAIR includes also Nordland County in Norway.

Read more about the project at the FAIR Website.