France’s Aerospace Valley will mark its 20th anniversary in 2025. As one of Europe’s largest industry clusters, it is looking to attract more private financing to support the technology leadership ambitions of its more than 850 member companies and organizations.

According to Bruno Dahan, the organization's executive director for aerospace, while the French industry has received financial support from its government and European Union sources, it has yet to prove as much of a magnet for venture capital and private equity backers as the tech sector in the U.S. and Middle East.

The Aerospace Valley covers a vast territory, including the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region around Bordeaux and Occitanie-Pyrénées-Méditerranée, which includes Toulouse. Its membership includes industry giants such as Airbus, Safran, Dassault, and Thales, as well as almost 600 small and medium-sized enterprises collectively engaged in 739 funded projects.

The cluster covers companies, universities, and other organizations active in aeronautics, space, and defense, with a strong emphasis on uncrewed aircraft and, increasingly, efforts to decarbonize aviation. In early December, the Aerospace Valley hosted its sixth annual Green Aero Days conference in Toulouse, bringing together aircraft manufacturers, equipment suppliers, airport managers, energy providers, investors, and national and international officials.

Since 2020, when it launched its MAELE initiative (“mobilité aérienne légère et environnementalement,” or environmentally responsible light air mobility), the organization has been prioritizing joint work to advance decarbonization in light aviation, including new forms of hybrid-electric and electric air mobility.

“We have focused on the CS23 sector [EASA’s Part 23 rules] of light aviation because we know it is easier to start [decarbonization] in this sector and then to mature the technology and apply it to larger aircraft later,” Dahan told AIN. “But many of the companies in the CS23 sector don’t have the size to do this alone, so when they collaborate progress is possible.”

At this point, hardly any of the active projects being worked on by Aerospace Valley members are not related to environmental sustainability. “Today, it’s almost impossible to raise money if you are not focused on this,” Dahan noted. “In France, we have the capability to get from the start to entry into service with a [net zero carbon] aircraft because all the main players are here, with most of them concentrated in the wider southwestern region, in what is the second largest aerospace ecosystem in the world.”

However, Aerospace Valley isn’t intended as a nationalistic cluster and is committed to welcoming companies and organizations from other countries to share in its collaborative efforts. This year’s Green Aero Days gathering included sessions in French and English with an agenda expanded beyond aircraft to include topics relating to decarbonization infrastructure, such as the hydrogen fuel supply chain.

According to Dahan, France’s transportation network, which remains highly-centralized around Paris, presents significant opportunities for disruption in the form of regional air services operated by a new generation of reduced-carbon small airliners. “New 19-passenger aircraft could make a big difference as there are plenty of small airfields with capacity,” he said. “No runway in France is farther away from another runway than 50 kilometers [30 miles].

Dahan and his colleagues also see a new wave of greener regional airlines paving the way to progress with larger future airliners from Airbus and Boeing. They see the new air mobility sector proving to be the training ground for the thousands of pilots and technicians required to support future fleet growth.