Hot topic: Aviation – meeting the climate challenge

Across the globe, the increasing mobility of goods and people is driving transport demand and associated carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. Making It asked representatives of the shipping and aviation industries – two forms of transport that are crucial to global trade – what they are doing to stem the rising CO2 levels that lead to climate change.

Paul Steele is Executive Director of the Air Transport Action Group (ATAG), a worldwide alliance of companies and associations throughout the air transport industry that are interested in promoting economically beneficial aviation capacity and infrastructure improvements in an environmentally responsible manner.

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At the third Aviation and Environment summit in April 2008, the aviation industry came together in a way that it has rarely done on issues other than maybe safety, and signed a declaration on a commitment to deal with the climate change challenge.

Cargo plane being loaded at Hong Kong International Airport | Photo: Uden Graham/Redlink/Corbis

Although we are a key driver of economic activity, a provider of a conduit for economic development, social development, trade, and tourism, that does come with the risk of climate change and the CO2 emissions that the aviation industry makes. If the industry continued on the same path, we would see a significant increase in CO2 emissions in the future.

Since that declaration, the aviation industry has done a lot of analysis and we have a very deep understanding of where we need to act and how we need to act. In 2009, we adopted three very ambitious targets for addressing climate change.

Three targets

The first is that, between 2010 and 2020, the aviation industry will continue to push to improve fuel efficiency by an average of 1.5% per annum. That may not sound like a lot, but it would amount to a 17% improvement over the years up to 2020.

Secondly, from 2020, we are committed to carbon-neutral growth; meaning that we want to cap our net emissions, while continuing to be able to develop and grow the industry.

And thirdly, by 2050, we aim to reduce our net emissions by 50% compared to where they were in 2005.

These are truly ambitious targets, and the industry is united behind these targets in a way that it rarely has been before. There is a very strong shared commitment to delivering on them.

But targets alone are not enough. We need to lay out a clear roadmap on where we’re going in terms of trying to deliver on these targets. Because at some point, having announced them, we will be held accountable for what we said we wanted to do. We know that there are existing technological, infrastructure, and operational improvement opportunities that are already in the pipeline. But we also know that if we want to reach the carbon-neutral growth challenge from 2020, and the longer term objective of reducing emissions by half, there is a lot more that needs to be done in terms of development, both of technology and of sustainable fuels.

Each of those targets demands a huge amount of commitment, collaboration, and work on behalf of the industry.

Fuel efficiency

If we look at the short-term target of a 1.5% annual increase in fuel efficiency, what that translates into between now and 2020 is finding reductions of about 728 million tons of carbon. And it will mean that in the year 2020 alone we will have to find about 150 million tons of CO2 reductions. Now, with all the analysis we have done, we know where those reduction opportunities may lie. And I think it’s really worth noting that some of those things are purely within the remit of the industry – investments in fleet renewal, operational improvements, retrofits – all things that the industry can contribute. But there are certain things, particularly in the areas of infrastructure and airspace management and design, where governments have to play an active role.

Very often, we are asked the question, “So the industry is talking about governments spending more money on air traffic management systems?” But, of course, that’s not the only answer. It’s not just about money. It’s also about political will. It’s about making decisions about the management of airspace, the trade-offs between military and civil airspace, etc. And of course, there is the importance of sustainable alternative fuels for aviation, and particularly the promise of biofuels. Here again, we must look to governments to help and support this industry, in getting this fledgling industry off the ground, and in supplying the quantities we need for civil aviation.

That 1.5% per annum fuel-efficiency target translates into the need for 12,000 new aircraft between now and 2020. Five thousand of those will replace existing planes that are in the fleet, and 7,000 of those aircraft will supply the growth in places like China, India, Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East. And that’s at a cost of US$1.3 trillion to the industry.

Carbon-neutral growth

The second of our targets – carbon-neutral growth – is probably the most crucial one, is probably the most difficult one, and is certainly the most politically contentious one. Carbon-neutral growth means capping our net emissions from 2020, but we have to do that by working across the board with a combination of technology, including alternative fuels, operational efficiencies, infrastructure improvements, and economic measures, both in terms of positive incentives and the opportunity to offset some of those emissions in the medium-term.

Looking again at the emissions roadmap and looking further forward, we’ve identified alternative fuels, and in particular biofuels, as a big opportunity. When we signed that declaration in 2008, biofuels and alternative fuels were something of a dream. But since then they have become a reality. We’ve flown planes, we know that they work, and we know we can use them as drop-in fuels. The certification process is proceeding, and by the end of the first quarter of 2011 those fuels will be available for aviation. The challenge now is about commercialization and scaling up.

Let’s not fool ourselves; it is a huge challenge, it is a massive challenge, but also a big opportunity.

• Read part one in this series: Hot topic: Sustainable shipping ←