FLYING BLIND – EUROPE’S PLANS TO DECARBONIZE AVIATION

Contributed by Robert Lyman © 2023. Robert Lyman’s bio can be read here.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Aviation now accounts for only 2.5% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, but the emissions and their share of the world total are expected to increase considerably in the period to 2050. This has made the aviation sector a target for those who maintain that human GHG emissions pose a catastrophic threat and who therefore seek to eliminate them as soon as possible. The International Air Transport Association (IATA) agreed to set a target of cutting GHG emissions in half by 2050.

Climate campaigners and the governments that support their objectives have sought to reduce aviation emissions, largely through increasing the costs borne by airlines and thus, indirectly, by increasing passenger airfares. Under the European Union’s Emissions Trading System (EU ETS), airlines operating there must have enough emissions allowances to cover every tonne of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions released into the atmosphere on flights starting and ending in the European Economic Area, the UK and Switzerland. The added costs from the EU ETS system probably will cause ticket prices to double before 2050.

In 2021, European representatives of the aviation sector launched a “sustainability initiative” called “Destination 2050”. The goal of this initiative is net zero carbon dioxide emissions from all flights within and departing from the EU+ area (the European Union, the United Kingdom and the European Free Trade Association) in 2050. The related Destination 2050 report[1] sets out a decarbonization pathway to achieve this goal.

Most recently, a report by research groups SEO Amsterdam Economics and the Royal Netherlands Aerospace Centre, commissioned by airline industry bodies, has estimated the cost of reaching net zero by 2050 to be 820 billion Euros (CDN$1.148 trillion). Both reports conclude that the sector will not be able to absorb those costs itself. The combined average annual expenditures towards the net zero goal would be 59 billion Euros over the period to 2050.

[1] https://www.destination2050.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Destination2050_Report.pdf