On July 6, 2021, Professor Andreas W. Schäfer of University College London was invited to deliver an online academic presentation entitled "Opportunities and Challenges for Decarbonizing the Aviation Sector".The report was hosted by Professor. Biying Yu, and more than 30 teachers and students from the Center participated in the report.

   Andreas W. Schafer is a professor at the Energy and Transport Institute at University College London and director of the Air Transport Systems Laboratory at University College London.Before joining University College London, he held positions at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, The University of Cambridge and Stanford University.Specializing in energy and transportation system analysis, Professor Andreas has developed econometric models of national, world-regional and global travel demand, technical and economic assessment models of advanced transportation technologies for ground and aviation, and integrated models of global air transportation systems. Related research results have been published in international mainstream journals such as Nature Climate Change and Nature Energy.

   In this report, Professor Andreas first introduced the current situation and the future growth trend of carbon emissions in the global passenger transport and cargo aviation sectors, focusing on the particularity and difficulty of emission reduction in the aviation sector compared with other sectors.Then, based on his previous research results, Professor Andreas presented the main opportunities and challenges facing the zero-carbon transformation process of the aviation sector.He highlighted key characteristics of the aviation sector, including stronger demand growth, reliance on high energy density fuels, high capital participation intensity, long life of equipment, relatively low yield, high cost of energy efficiency improvements, high non-CO2 greenhouse gas emissions, and lack of rapid mitigation methods.After the report, the participants had an in-depth exchange and discussion with Professor Andreas.