The layers of aviation industry greenwash

Posted on

Where is our flight from a safe climate taking us? It’s time to expose the layers of aviation industry greenwash

by Mark Carter 19 November 2024 in Climate Code Red

Qantas says it doesn’t buy political favours. But it has illegally sacked its workforce, short changed its customers, and paid no income tax last year.

Now it could be found guilty of greenwashing its efforts to reach net zero emissions by 2050. Qantas’s misleading claims about its net zero actions were exposed recently by Climate Integrity.

But that ain’t the half of it.

Focusing on its failure to reach that target allows an even bigger and more dangerous deception to linger. It is the illusion that net zero emissions by 2050 is sufficient to keep warming to the Paris Agreement target. The harsh reality is that even if its emissions were actually independently validated as tracking to a ‘net zero 2050 target’,  that won’t stop warming significantly exceeding 2ºC.

For Qantas ‘net zero 2050’ has never been a way to effectively and rapidly stop its contribution to global heating. It’s known all along that it can’t do that and stay in business,

‘Net zero 2050’ for Qantas, is about maintaining its social license. It’s about maintaining the illusion that net zero emissions by 2050 is a safe climate destination.

If we can be sold that illusion, then we’ll keep flying and new runways can be built — even though both will enable increasing flight emissions. So long as the industry and government keep us in the dark about the ineffectiveness of the ‘net zero 2050’ plans they spruik, we won’t know that their  actions will help push warming to 3ºC and beyond.

So long as we aren’t told about aviation’s climate-crash flight path we won’t know how quickly we really need to stop aviation emissions to avoid the crash.

For the aviation industry as a whole, and, for that matter our federal government too, ‘net zero 2050’ is just the latest layer of greenwash. The sector is a serial offender, having misrepresented its global warming impact for decades.

Back in the day, the industry told us its emissions were marginal at best, and not worthy of global attention. Then under political and social pressure it was forced to address its emissions. Which is when they started greenwashing their accountability for aviation’s contribution to global heating.

In 2015 the aviation industry successfully avoided having its biggest generator of emissions, international flights, being regulated under the Paris Agreement. They argued that assigning flight emissions to the country of departure would be way too difficult, and anyway, it was better for the sector to self regulate its emissions reductions.

In 2017, it set up CORSIA, the Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation to address only emissions in excess of 2019 levels and to make any subsequent cuts to them voluntary, not mandatory — allowing 60% of Qantas flight emissions to continue unabated.

Now, four years after Covid19 forced global cuts, flights and emissions have returned to the pre-Covid norm of 4% growth each year, and caveats to actual emissions reductions abound.

Even the government is in cahoots. Under the Safeguard Mechanism, Qantas is required to cut its domestic emissions in 2022 by 4.9% each year to 2030, or from 4.4mt CO2e to 2.9mt — way short of the 2.3mt required by 2030 under the Climate Change Act’s inadequate 43% cuts to 2005 emissions.

But don’t worry, we’re told in the government’s Aviation White Paper, aviation will ‘look to maximising its contribution to reaching net zero emissions in 2050’. Elsewhere, airlines say they’ll ‘work toward’ reducing emissions using so-called ‘Sustainable Aviation Fuels’, that don’t cut actual inflight emissions, and won’t completely replace jet diesel for decades, if ever.

They tell us their actions are ‘climate friendly’, ‘carbon neutral’, and ‘climate positive’. Chris Bowen tells us that what the government is ‘trying to do is avoid the worst’ impacts, even though warming is right now nudging the Paris 1.5ºC threshold, and, according to the IEA, emissions in 2050 will be only marginally lower than now.

They tell us not to worry because they’re focussing on trying to get to a ‘low carbon future’, even though the IPCC carbon budget for a net zero 2050 target only ever had a less than 50:50 chance of holding warming to 2ºC.

‘Net zero 2050’ greenwashing is a dangerous fantasy. It’s magical thinking. Is it even psychotic thinking? If we want to be safe we should be looking for the emergency exit.

The dangerous, deceitful and delusional diversions, from the necessity of immediate & deep aviation emissions cuts, must be called out. Their perpetrators — the aviation industry and its federal government regulator — must abandon the sector’s flightpath, land the plane and, aside from emergency flights, stay grounded until flying is emissions free.

How much does aviation contribute to climate change? How will this change in the future?

Aviation is responsible for around 3% of global emissions, and will be one of the hardest sectors to tackle.

HANNAH RITCHIE
SEP 26, 2023
This article is the first in a two-parter on global aviation. This was sparked by various questions from readers on the role of aviation in climate change, and – as a follow-up from my article on biofuels for road transport in the US – what role biofuels could play in this.

Aviation will be one of the toughest sectors to decarbonise. It’s also an area that creates a lot of confusion. For those that fly, it’s one of the largest chunks of their carbon footprint. But because most people don’t fly, it emits just 2% to 3% of global emissions.

We can demonstrate the inequality of flying with a simple calculation. Let’s say everyone in the world took one return short-haul trip per year. We’ll go from London to Madrid. This would emit around 0.5 tonnes per person. For 8 billion people, this would be 4 billion tonnes of CO2.

If everyone took a long-haul return trip from London to San Fransisco, emissions would be 22 billion tonnes of CO2 from flying alone.1

In reality, global aviation emits around one billion tonnes. That’s because most people in the world don’t fly. They can’t afford it.

So, how should we think about aviation in the future? How will demand change, and what are the options to decarbonise? That’s what we’ll look at here.

For this analysis, I’ve relied heavily on an excellent paper by Candelaria Bergero and colleagues, published in Nature Sustainability in 2023.2 The future scenarios come from them, but I’ve thrown in some comparisons and additional details along the way.

Below I’ve provided a summary of global aviation metrics. They give an overview of how demand, energy efficiency and CO2 emissions have changed since 1990.

Let’s dig into the key trends one-by-one.

Global passenger demand for flying has increased four-fold since 1990

 

In 1990, people were travelling around 2 trillion passenger-kilometres by air. That is, the distance covered multiplied by the number of passengers on board.

By 2019, this had quadrupled to over 8 trillion passenger-kilometres.

We then see the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2020, demand plunged – almost back to 1990 levels. Demand has since started to rebound, and the airline industry expects that it will be back to 2019 levels again by 2024 or 2025.

Aviation has become more energy-efficient, but little progress has been made in moving to cleaner fuels

 

Flying has become much more energy-efficient. Since 1990, the amount of energy used per passenger-kilometre has more than halved. This is shown in the chart below.

You will notice that there was a spike in 2020. This was because the ‘passenger load factor’ was much lower: planes were flying with a lot more empty seats. Planes were still burning lots of fuel, but this was ‘split between’ fewer passengers.

This efficiency has come from improved design and technology, larger planes that can carry more passengers, and a higher ‘passenger load factor’. Empty seats are less common than in the past.

The amount of carbon emitted per unit of energy has not changed. We’re still burning jet fuel that releases the same amount of CO2 when burned. Alternative fuels – such as biofuels – are only a tiny part of the mix.

Combine these two factors – energy per passenger-kilometre, and the CO2emitted per unit of energy – and we get the amount of CO2 emitted per passenger-kilometre.3 It mirrors the chart of energy intensity: rates have more than halved since 1990.

Go further back in time, and the improvements are even more impressive. As I covered in an article on Our World in Data, emissions per passenger-kilometre in 1960 were twenty-times higher than they are today.4

 

How much of global CO2 emissions does aviation emit?

 

To calculate CO2 emissions from aviation, we need to combine passenger demand and how much is emitted per passenger-kilometre (and do the same for freight).

In a world with no improvements in energy efficiency, we’d expect emissions to have quadrupled since 1990. That’s what happened to demand.

Thankfully, these efficiency improvements have dampened some of this increase. Emissions approximately doubled from 0.5 to 1 billion tonnes.

But aviation doesn’t only contribute to climate change through its CO2 emissions. It emits other greenhouse gases, and the release of water vapour at altitude significantly increases its warming impact. When we account for this, its contribution increases by around 70%.

This is shown in the chart – one line shows CO2 emissions only, and the other is shown in CO2-equivalents, with altitude impacts included.

Aviation is responsible for 2.8% of CO2 emissions from fossil fuels and industry.5When land use change is included, it’s responsible for 2.5%. We can see how this share has changed over time in the chart below.

When its full greenhouse impacts are included, aviation is responsible for at least 3.5% of warming.6

Future demand for aviation

 

How will aviation demand change in the future? As people get richer, they tend to fly more. So, if incomes across the world grow, demand will increase.

Bergero et al. (2023) mapped out three growth scenarios. They’re shown below.

Business-as-usual: assumes that demand returns to pre-pandemic levels by 2024 or 2025. Then demand grows at around 4% per year. This is in line with historical growth rates, and IMF projections for economic growth.

Industry projections: Industry is slightly less bullish on demand growth. In this scenario, demand recovers to pre-pandemic levels by 2024 or 2025 then grows at around 2.9% per year.

Ambitious demand reduction: This scenario imagines strong reductions in demand. It recovers slowly and only reaches 2019 levels in 2050. Since demand will increase in low-to-middle income countries as they get richer, keeping demand lower could require large reductions in rich countries.

These demand scenarios – for passenger transport and freight – are summarised in the chart below. It shows actual demand in 2019, alongside 2050 demand in each scenario. Under the business-as-usual scenario, demand would more than double by 2050. In the ‘ambitious reduction’ scenario, it would barely increase at all.

What does this mean for the future of aviation emissions?

 

Future aviation emissions will not only depend on these changes in demand. They’ll also depend on improvements in energy efficiency and the adoption of low-carbon technologies.

The authors combined these demand scenarios with three technology scenarios.

Carbon-intensive: planes continue to use 100% jet fuel, as they do today. Improvements in energy efficiency continue, but the CO2 emitted per unit of energy does not change.

Reduced fossil use: 65% of medium and long-haul flights are powered by ‘sustainable’ aviation fuels (synthetic fuels such as biofuels) and 13% of short-haul flights are powered by electric planes or hydrogen by 2050. This follows the IATA’s net zero emissions plan.

Net zero: biofuels power 100% of medium- and long-haul aviation by 2050. Electric and hydrogen power 50% of short-haul flights, with the rest powered by biofuels.

The assumptions around energy and carbon intensity in each scenario are shown in the chart below.

We can then see how each of these technological scenarios affects our three demand scenarios in terms of emissions.

If we carried on a ‘business-as-usual’ path with no move away from jet fuel, annual emissions would double by 2050. In a ‘reduced fossil’ scenario, they would increase by smaller amounts, and they would fall in a ‘net zero’ pathway.

If demand growth was more modest – following the industry projection – annual emissions would only be slightly higher in a carbon-intensive pathway. They would fall in both scenarios of technological change.

Emissions would fall in a reduced demand scenario, regardless of the technological path.

Note that in all scenarios, the sector’s emissions would not reach zero. That means that to achieve ‘net-zero’, it would still need to invest in negative emissions (taking emissions out of the atmosphere). That’s billions of tonnes of negative emissions, which could be extremely expensive.

This gives us two levers for reducing emissions: cut demand, or rapidly scale technological innovations.

These alternative pathways require electrification, biofuels, and hydrogen. In particular, they rely on large amounts of biofuels. How feasible would this transition be: how does it compare to current biofuel production, and how much land would we need?

I’ll dig into this question in Part Two.

——–

1

A return trip from London to San Fransisco emits around 2.8 tonnes per person.

Multiply this by 8 billion and we get 22.4 billion tonnes of CO2.

https://co2.myclimate.org/en/portfolios?calculation_id%3D6199764

 

2

Bergero, C., Gosnell, G., Gielen, D., Kang, S., Bazilian, M., & Davis, S. J. (2023). Pathways to net-zero emissions from aviation. Nature Sustainability, 6(4), 404-414.

 

3

This metric wasn’t included in the supplementary material in the Bergero et al. (2023) paper, but I calculated it based on the energy and carbon intensity values.

 

4

Lee, D. S., Fahey, D. W., Skowron, A., Allen, M. R., Burkhardt, U., Chen, Q., … & Gettelman, A. (2020). The contribution of global aviation to anthropogenic climate forcing for 2000 to 2018. Atmospheric Environment, 117834.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1352231020305689

 

5

In 2019, global CO2 emissions (excluding land use change) were 37.08 billion tonnes.

CO2 emissions from aviation were 1.04 billion tonnes.

That means aviation accounted for 2.8%.

 

6

Lee, D. S., Fahey, D. W., Skowron, A., Allen, M. R., Burkhardt, U., Chen, Q., … & Gettelman, A. (2020). The contribution of global aviation to anthropogenic climate forcing for 2000 to 2018. Atmospheric Environment, 117834.

Pledge Your Vote Now
Change language