Airbus // Universal Registration Document 2023

1. Information on the Company’s Activities

1.2 Non-Financial Information

1

Strategic pathway 5 Encouraging temporary CO2 emission compensation schemes

SAF (from 30% blend up to 100% SAF, with different aromatics and sulphur content), to capture and analyse in-flight data. The preliminary observations show a positive impact of SAF on aircraft emissions, and are expected to be published in peer-reviewed scientific literature in 2024. – – On hydrogen, the Company launched Blue Condor in 2022, a demonstrator taking a modified glider up to 33,000 feet to analyse hydrogen combustion’s impact on contrail properties. The result of this analysis will provide critical information on aviation’s non-CO 2 emissions, including contrails and NO x , in advance of the ZEROe demonstrator flight testing. – –On operational measures, the Company launched in early July 2023, the CICONIA project in the context of the SESAR 3 Joint Undertaking. This project gathers 16 partners including major airlines and air navigation service providers. It will run for three years with the objectives of improving weather forecasting capabilities, improving climate impact assessment, defining a climate-optimised concept of operations and trialling system solutions at aircraft and air traffic control level. The project brings together experts and partners from climate science, meteorological institutions, airlines, manufacturers and air traffic control to focus on effective and operationally viable solutions to aviation’s non-CO 2 emissions. In addition, the Company actively contributes to several international working groups and external conferences on non-CO 2 , including those aimed at defining the future European Monitoring Reporting and Verification (MRV) scheme. Product resilience in the context of climate change Aircraft products are sensitive to weather phenomena during their operation phase. The adaptation of aircraft design and operation to the changing climate is therefore an important activity to be anticipated, in particular given the long lead time associated with aircraft development and operation. EASA has recently launched an industry working group under the name European Network – Impact of Climate Change on Aviation (EN-ICCA) with the objective to define a work programme to ensure continuous progress in enhancing adaptive capacity, strengthening resilience and reducing vulnerability to climate change for the aviation domain, in which the Company is fully engaged. In addition, more specifically with regards to its defence product portfolio, the Company is collaborating with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (“ NATO ”) and other defence industry players and organisations (in the so-called NATO Study Group 291) with the objective of developing recommendations on ensuring › › After the successful use of Direct Air Capture (DAC) technology designed by the Company and the European Space Agency to scrub carbon dioxide from the air aboard the International Space Station, the Company’s innovation acceleration unit Airbus Scale began investigating how the technology could be scaled and applied on land to industries that consume or produce CO 2 in their production processes, such as capturing and converting CO 2 into fertilisers, fuels and carbon negative materials. › › In 2022, the Company partnered with 1PointFive and pre-purchased 400,000 tons of carbon removals (see Offset Strategy above). In 2023, the groundbreaking ceremony took place on the 28 April 2023 in Texas, US. It also invested in Carbon Engineering Ltd., a Canadian-based climate solutions company, operating the largest Direct Air Carbon Capture (DACC) Research & Development facility in the world.

Non-CO 2 impacts While non-CO 2 emissions of aviation have become an increasingly publicised topic in 2023, the topic is not new for the industry. The Company has been actively engaged in research to support the scientific community in better understanding the impact of non-CO 2 emissions on the climate as well as in evaluating and deploying technological mitigation solutions for almost 20 years. Aircraft engines produce direct emissions linked to the fuel combustion and indirect emissions formed in its wake. Those emissions, which have an impact on climate when flying in high altitudes, include carbon dioxide (CO 2 ), nitrogen oxides (NO x ), water vapour (H 2 O), nvPM (non-volatile particulate matter of black-carbon or soot), sulphur oxides (SO x ) and condensation trails. Depending upon prevailing weather conditions, altitude and geographical location, non-CO 2 emissions can change the chemical composition of the atmosphere and the cloudiness, which in turn affect the climate. CO 2 emissions contribute to increased atmospheric CO 2 concentrations, which induce a low and positive radiative forcing, but with cumulative effects due to the long lifetime of this greenhouse gas in the atmosphere. Non-CO 2 emissions do not have the same cumulative effect as CO 2 . Non-CO 2 forcers such as contrail-cirrus and NO x are short lived components that have stronger, but time-limited effects. Uncertainties are still high on the exact impact of non-CO 2 emissions of aviation. Lee et al. 2021 states that uncertainties around the contribution of non-CO 2 emissions on aviation’s net effective radiative forcing (ERF) are ~8 times higher than those of CO 2 . Non-CO 2 emissions can have both positive (warming) and negative (cooling) radiative impacts. In particular, contrail-cirrus can have cooling or warming effects depending on several factors such as their location and time of generation, spatial coverage, lifetime, or optical properties (ice crystal size, shape, density), though the effect at night is exclusively warming. The Company is actively working on a large portfolio of projects focused on increasing the understanding of non-CO 2 emissions generation, their evolution and their climate effects, but also to evaluate and develop solutions covering several promising mitigation options impacting three well-identified domains: through the use of new energies such as SAF or hydrogen, enhanced engine technology and flight operations (implementation of operational/ATM measures). These include: – – On SAF, the ECLIF3 and VOLCAN projects included a German Aerospace Center (DLR)’s Falcon aircraft, flying within 100m behind the Company’s test aircraft fuelled with various types of Finally, CO 2 emission compensation will be instrumental to stabilising aviation emissions in the medium term until disruptive solutions reach market maturity. For that reason, the Company supports ICAO’s CORSIA scheme as the only global market based measure for international civil aviation. The Company believes that direct air carbon capture and storage (DACCS) is a high-potential technology that could turn out to be meaningful in carbon schemes applicable to aviation. As the aviation industry cannot capture CO 2 emissions released into the atmosphere at source, DACCS is one of the most promising technologies to neutralise residual emissions. DACCS is designed to capture CO 2 emissions directly from the atmosphere using high powered fans and store CO 2 in underground reservoirs.

89 Airbus Annual Report

Universal Registration Document 2023