The increasing relevance of air transport as a contributor to climate change requires the development of emissions reduction technologies in a socio-economic and cultural context, where demand and air traffic have traditionally held sustained growth rates. However, the irruption of COVID-19 in 2020 has had an enormous negative impact on air travel demand and traffic volumes. Coincidentally, during 2020, new technology proposals for emissions reduction based on use of hydrogen and synthetic fuels have emerged from the aviation stake holders. By following a novel approach connecting the analysis of expectations of technology developments and their deployment into the fleet to market constraints, this study discusses how, even considering the new technology proposals and even if the COVID-19 has led to a completely different scenario in tourism and aviation, the air transport energy paradigm will remain unchanged in the upcoming decades as a consequence of market constraints, aircraft complexity, compliance with safety requirements, and extended life cycles. In this frame, aviation needs to keep on pursuing the abatement of its emissions while managing social expectations in a realistic manner and leaning on compensation schemes to achieve emissions contention while new technologies become serviceable in the longer term.
El transporte aéreo es un elemento indispensable en el desarrollo de un turismo globalizado. Las previsiones de crecimiento de ambos sectores son unánimes. En este trabajo se analiza la sostenibilidad del transporte aéreo desde una perspectiva energética y se compara el grado de criticidad de la disponibilidad de petróleo, frente a la de la amenaza del cambio climático por efecto de las emisiones de gases. Se analizan la evolución y proyecciones de los sectores de la energía, aviación y el turismo, elaborando una visión integral de las cuestiones de sostenibilidad energética y medioambiental. Se emplea una metodología mixta, triangulando el análisis de las proyecciones de entidades de la energía, el transporte aéreo y el turismo con la utilización de métodos cualitativos de observación participante y entrevistas a expertos.El estudio confirma la mayor urgencia por trabajar en la prevención de una posible crisis medioambiental frente a una de escasez energética. Dado que el paradigma energético de la propulsión de aeronaves no cambiará en el medio plazo, y que la aviación y el turismo continuarán creciendo, la relevancia de ambos como contribuidores al problema del cambio climático irá en aumento. Las mejoras en otros sectores de mayor consumo energético y generación de emisiones relativizarán la importancia del crecimiento de las emisiones globales del transporte aéreo. Los esquemas de compensación de emisiones serán necesarios para permitir al sector progresar hacia una estabilización de las mismas, advirtiendo de las dificultades y riesgos de su implementación si se convierten en un puro instrumento mercantil.
Aviation sustainability and GHG emissions reduction are academic and social trending topics. Air transport intensive energy use together with its constant pre-pandemic growth and the difficulties to evolve towards non-carbon-based energy paradigms, conform an environmentally “worrying frame”. Emissions reduction initiatives comprise aircraft technology and operation improvements, tax schemes, compensation and trading, efficient infrastructures, and sustainable aviation fuels. All of them have been subject of extensive academic analysis. Aspects that have been almost neglected in this analysis are the personal motivation and commitment from air transport stakeholders to pursue longer term technology developments towards sustainable energy paradigms. This paper explores those aspects by using a novel methodology where experts were interviewed prior to the COVID-19 pandemic (2017-2018) and during the pandemic (summer 2021), aiming at exploring the evolution of their beliefs regarding aviation sustainability, focusing in the expectations regarding aviation energy paradigm changes. Additionally, a survey was run among professionals of the aviation and energy sectors performing a quantitative analysis, triangulated with the interviews’ results. Aviation professionals keep relying on air traffic recovery and growth despite the COVID crisis. They are also conscious of the difficulties of the sector to enact the application of emissions reduction technologies and policies. However, there is not consensus in the strategies with the highest potential, although some tendencies have been identified: whilst enthusiasm about aircraft electrification has cooled down, a higher degree of reliance is put in new engine architectures. Fiscal measures are either poorly valued or not well understood. Aviation should leverage the consensus on new engine architectures to achieve tangible emissions contention in the mid-term, increase efforts to improve and explain emissions trading and compensation schemes, keep developing new technologies to unveil their real potential, and manage social expectations realistically, stressing its social and economic sustainability dimensions.
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