The significant impact of airborne cabin pressurisation and cooling systems on fuel consumption requires new technologies to be investigated. In the pursuit of decreasing fuel consumption while leveraging on the benefits of electrification, a shift was initiated from conventional bleed air driven to electric powered air cycle machines based environmental control systems. The performed research goes a step further by considering an alternative configuration in the form of an electric driven vapour cycle refrigeration unit. The system to be installed onboard a technology demonstrator is integrated at aircraft level and its impact on fuel consumption is compared to that of an electrically driven air cycle machine. Fuel consumption related results show up to 1.62 % trip fuel reduction for a baseline mission of 1000 nm and 12000 kg payload for the technology demonstrator aircraft equipped with the vapour compression cycle refrigeration system as compared to the baseline model.