Aviation is an essential element of today's global society, bringing people and cultures together and creating economic growth.

The air transport industry is paying a lot of attention to growing public concern about the environmental issues of air pollution, noise and climate change. Although today air transport only produces 2 % of man-made CO2 emissions, this is expected to increase to 3 % by 2050.

The challenges facing air transport are:

• Climate change is a world-wide recognised issue
• Europe has clear fixed targets to reduce negative environmental impacts
• Global demand for oil will continue to rise to extremely volatile prices
• Carbon trading allowance or tax is likely to increase

Air traffic is of significant importance for the enlarged European economy, global competitiveness, our way of living.

Clean Sky is a "Joint Technology Initiative" (JTI) that will develop breakthrough technologies to reduce environmental impact. The Clean Sky JTI will be one of the largest European research projects ever, with a budget estimated at €1.6 billion, equally shared between the European Commission and industry, over the period 2008 - 2013. This public-private partnership will speed up technological breakthrough developments and shorten the time to market for new solutions tested on Full Scale Demonstrators.

Clean Sky will encourage the participation of SMEs to ensure their full involvement in the programme, therefore offering opportunities to the entire aeronautic supply chain from all EU Member States and Associated countries.