{"id":190454,"date":"2017-11-16T11:30:55","date_gmt":"2017-11-16T16:30:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/irpp-policy-options.local\/issues\/the-policy-dilemma-of-aviation-emissions\/"},"modified":"2025-04-14T04:31:39","modified_gmt":"2025-04-14T08:31:39","slug":"the-policy-dilemma-of-aviation-emissions","status":"publish","type":"issues","link":"https:\/\/potestlaunch.irpp.org\/fr\/2017\/11\/the-policy-dilemma-of-aviation-emissions\/","title":{"rendered":"The policy dilemma of aviation emissions"},"content":{"rendered":"

The news these days is rife with stories about the impending electric vehicle (EV) revolution, and for the most part, it\u2019s a good-news story: EVs are expected to take over the global automobile market in the next few decades<\/a>, thereby helping to reduce the transport sector\u2019s carbon footprint<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, we hear almost nothing in the media about the rising greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from air travel, which seem poised to negate some of the gains made from EVs. Unfortunately, unlike the shift towards electrification of automobiles and the growth of renewables, there are no good policy options on the table for adequately reducing emissions from aviation.<\/p>\n

It is shaping up to be quite a dilemma: By all measures, modern humans are addicted to air travel<\/a>, and yet despite considerable efforts by the airline industry to make airplanes more efficient, there is no practical way to produce zero-emission aircraft. Sadly, the only genuine way to reduce our collective carbon footprint from long-distance transport \u2013 given available technologies \u2013 is to significantly cut down on passenger and cargo flights.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s where things get very uncomfortable. Clearly, major society-wide reductions in air transport would spell disaster for a range of economic sectors, not least aviation, but tourism and the petroleum sector too. It would also dramatically alter the social relations to which we\u2019ve become accustomed in a globalized world. Cut out air travel or continue contributing to the ongoing climate emergency faced by our home planet \u2014 this is the inconvenient juncture at which we have arrived.<\/p>\n

In some ways we\u2019re lucky these are not the same stark choices we face for local transportation. Switching out an old gas-guzzling car for an EV (or even better, a bicycle or transit pass) may dramatically improve one\u2019s local carbon footprint, but no parallel solution presently exists for fast long-distance travel, even domestically. For instance, VIA Rail\u2019s transcontinental train journey from Toronto to Vancouver takes four days and (despite conventional wisdom) is substantially more taxing on the environment than flying, thanks to the low occupancy ratios and VIA\u2019s old diesel-powered locomotives<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Cut out air travel or continue contributing to the ongoing climate emergency faced by our home planet \u2014 this is the inconvenient juncture at which we have arrived.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Transportation accounts for 14 percent of global emissions, but in industrialized countries like Canada and the United States the sector is responsible for about a quarter of anthropogenic emissions. In Canada, transportation emissions have grown by 42 percent<\/a> since 1990, driven mostly by growth in road transportation. In fact, emissions from domestic aviation have only grown marginally since 1990, thanks largely to improvements in fuel efficiency counterbalancing growth in air travel. However, Canadian-based GHG emissions for international aviation (which are not included <\/em>in the domestic figures above) have actually grown by 85 percent since 1990.<\/p>\n

Again, this emissions growth is despite major improvements in the fuel-efficiency of aircraft in recent years. Indeed, many airlines have been successful in reducing carrying weights (through innovations in lightweight equipment and those expensive baggage restrictions we all know so well) \u2014 all of which helps cut down on fuel use. They have also been fairly successful in incorporating biofuels into the fuel mix (which can theoretically reduce the carbon footprint of a flight). Canada\u2019s leading airlines are betting big on second-generation biofuels (which use forestry residue and agricultural by-products as feedstock rather than diverting food crops) to help reduce emissions. Unfortunately, the development of second-generation biofuels has largely stalled<\/a> thanks to the low price of oil, and biofuels are not expected to make up more than a fraction of the fuel mix used in aviation in the coming decade. Meanwhile, the first-generation biofuels currently in use raise a host of other social and environmental concerns<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In short, improvements in fuel efficiency will take us only so far. The jumbo plane in the room is, literally, the jumbo plane! The number of air travellers globally has more than doubled in the last two decades, and forecasts expect demand for air travel to double<\/a> again<\/em> in the next two decades. The same story is true of world air cargo \u2013 with base-scenario forecasts expecting global air cargo traffic to more than double<\/a> over the next two decades as well.<\/p>\n

Even in a scenario with moderate technological improvements and modest regulatory changes, emissions from aviation are expected to grow by upwards of 76 percent over the next two decades<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Efficient planes or not, this growth trend is clearly working against the already troubled efforts<\/a> to avoid catastrophic global warming. Airline emissions today account for 2.5 percent of annual anthropogenic GHG emissions worldwide (that\u2019s more than all GHG emissions emitted by Brazil<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 the world\u2019s seventh-largest carbon-emitting state). Even in a scenario with moderate technological improvements and modest regulatory changes, emissions from aviation are expected to grow by upwards of 76 percent<\/a> over the next two decades, simply because of the increase in demand.<\/p>\n

While it is in the interest of airlines to improve fuel efficiency (since fuel accounts for up to a third of operational costs), it is clearly not in the industry\u2019s interest to curtail growing demand. This is why the industry\u2019s proposed solution to the problem, backed by global institutions, is a new program called the Carbon Offset and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation<\/a> (CORSIA). The plan largely relies on offsets \u2013 investments in various emissions reduction projects elsewhere to cancel out the emissions from aviation. Yet while CORSIA might sound ambitious on paper \u2014 calling for the industry to cap its GHG emissions to 2020 levels by 2027 \u2014 it is bound to fail as a carbon mitigation strategy. Offsets, much like biofuels, face substantial limitations and conceptual flaws. As Kevin Anderson, former director of the Tyndall Centre (the UK\u2019s leading academic climate change research organization), has written in Nature<\/em><\/a>: \u201cOffsetting is worse than doing nothing. It is without scientific legitimacy, is dangerously misleading and almost certainly contributes to a net increase in the absolute rate of global emissions growth.\u201d<\/p>\n

Not only are global regulatory \u201csolutions\u201d like CORSIA a non-starter, but new technologies are also impractical or unlikely to work at the level of the jumbo plane. Prototypes for everything from hydrogen fuel-cell-powered airplanes, to atomic airplanes, to solar-panelled airplanes, to hybrid-electric airplanes<\/a> whose batteries can be recharged while in flight<\/em>, all presently exist<\/a>. But the chances that any one of these technological solutions will be applied to large commercial aircraft in the next decade are slim to none \u2014 because the technologies are only possible on small aircraft, or are too dangerous, or would take multi-year, multi-billion-dollar investments in a cutthroat industry that typically spends many years developing new aircraft only if a return on investment is expected.<\/p>\n

In the end, the only practical way to reduce our society\u2019s emissions from long-distance air transport (while admittedly giving rise to social costs elsewhere) is to restrict the growth in demand for air transport. It\u2019s going to take some political guts to try to shape or nudge the demand for passenger and cargo air transport, and there are a number of mechanisms through which that could be done, ranging from the unpopular levying of flight taxes, to the political suicide of imposing hard-cap restrictions on flight growth. Needless to say, neither of these policy options is likely to be attempted. Either way, the jumbo plane needs to be let out of the room: Relying on technological innovation, other market forces, and a global system of carbon offsets will not solve the serious problem of growing GHG emissions from aviation.<\/p>\n

By Shutterstock\/24Novembers<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Do you have something to say about the article you just read? Be part of the\u00a0<\/em>Policy Options\u00a0discussion, and send in your own submission.\u00a0Here is a\u00a0<\/em>link<\/em><\/a>\u00a0on how to do it. <\/em>|\u00a0Souhaitez-vous r\u00e9agir \u00e0 cet article ? <\/em>Joignez-vous aux d\u00e9bats d\u2019<\/em>Options politiques\u00a0et soumettez-nous votre texte en suivant ces\u00a0<\/em>directives<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The news these days is rife with stories about the impending electric vehicle (EV) revolution, and for the most part, it\u2019s a good-news story: EVs are expected to take over the global automobile market in the next few decades, thereby helping to reduce the transport sector\u2019s carbon footprint. Meanwhile, we hear almost nothing in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":45174,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","ep_exclude_from_search":false},"categories":[9362,9361,9372],"tags":[8532],"article-status":[],"irpp-category":[4243,4260,4224,4223],"section":[],"irpp-tag":[],"class_list":["post-190454","issues","type-issues","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economie","category-environnement","category-recent-stories-fr","tag-aviation-fr","irpp-category-economy","irpp-category-environment","irpp-category-transport","irpp-category-transportation"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe policy dilemma of aviation emissions<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"GHG emissions from air travel are rising and will hamper the world\u2019s efforts to curb climate change. 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