Evaluating the climate impact of aviation emission scenarios towards the Paris agreement including COVID-19 effects

Grewe, Volker; Rao, Arvind Gangoli; Grönstedt, Tomas; Xisto, Carlos; Linke, Florian; Melkert, Joris; Middel, Jan; Ohlenforst, Barbara; Blakey, Simon; Christie, Simon; Matthes, Sigrun; Dahlmann, Katrin

doi:10.1038/s41467-021-24091-y

Cited by 131 publications

(36 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…More generally, we only consider CO 2 emissions from aviation, but as much as twothirds of the sector's radiative forcing may be related to contrails, nitrogen oxides, sulphate aerosols, unburnt hydrocarbons, and soot 11,113,114 . While deploying SAFs to meet aviation carbon emission reductions may be compatible with international agreements, the sector's total climate impact could still be signi cant 37,115,116 . Similarly, we focus on direct reductions in aviation emissions, despite the plausibility of offsetting some aviation emissions via carbon dioxide removal 41 .…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Net-zero emissions aviation

Bergero

Gosnell

Gielen³

et al. 2022

Preprint

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International climate goals imply reaching net-zero global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by roughly mid-century. Among the most difficult emissions to avoid will be those from modern aviation given the industry’s need for energy-dense liquid fuels and the lack of commercially competitive substitutes. Here, we systematically assess pathways to net-zero emissions aviation, exploring the potential contribution of different approaches as well as their social, technical, and economic limits. We find that ambitious reductions in demand for air transport and improvements in the energy efficiency of aircraft might avoid up to 62% and 26%, respectively, of projected business-as-usual aviation emissions in 2050. However, further reductions will depend on replacing fossil jet fuel with very large quantities of net-zero emissions biofuels or synthetic fuels (2.5-21 EJ)—which are currently much more expensive. Our results may inform investments and priorities for innovation by highlighting plausible pathways to net-zero emissions aviation, including the relative potential and trade-offs of changes in behavior, technology, and energy sources.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Net-zero emissions aviation

Bergero

Gosnell

Gielen³

et al. 2022

Preprint

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“…Mainly due to attendee travel, in-person conferences are associated with large amounts of CO 2 emissions ( van Ewijk and Hoekman, 2021 ). As technological advancements will likely not sufficiently reduce the aviation industry’s emissions ( Grewe et al, 2021 ), additional behavior change is required to meet global emission reduction targets.…”

Section: Why International Conference Travel Practices Need To Changementioning

confidence: 99%

The Need for Sustainability, Equity, and International Exchange: Perspectives of Early Career Environmental Psychologists on the Future of Conferences

et al. 2022

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At the 2019 and 2021 International Conference on Environmental Psychology, discussions were held on the future of conferences in light of the enormous greenhouse gas emissions and inequities associated with conference travel. In this manuscript, we provide an early career researcher (ECR) perspective on this discussion. We argue that travel-intensive conference practices damage both the environment and our credibility as a discipline, conflict with the intrinsic values and motivations of our discipline, and are inequitable. As such, they must change. This change can be achieved by moving toward virtual and hybrid conferences, which can reduce researchers’ carbon footprints and promote equity, if employed carefully and with informal exchange as a priority. By acting collectively and with the support of institutional change, we can adapt conference travel norms in our field. To investigate whether our arguments correspond to views in the wider community of ECRs within environmental psychology, we conducted a community case study. By leveraging our professional networks and directly contacting researchers in countries underrepresented in those networks, we recruited 117 ECRs in 32 countries for an online survey in February 2022. The surveyed ECRs supported a change in conference travel practices, including flying less, and perceived the number of researchers wanting to reduce their travel emissions to be growing. Thirteen percent of respondents had even considered leaving academia due to travel requirements. Concerning alternative conference formats, a mixed picture emerged. Overall, participants had slightly negative evaluations of virtual conferences, but expected them to improve within the next 5 years. However, ECRs with health issues, facing visa challenges, on low funding, living in remote areas, with caretaking obligations or facing travel restrictions due to COVID-19 expected a switch toward virtual or hybrid conferences to positively affect their groups. Participants were divided about their ability to build professional relationships in virtual settings, but believed that maintaining relationships virtually is possible. We conclude by arguing that the concerns of ECRs in environmental psychology about current and alternative conference practices must be taken seriously. We call on our community to work on collective solutions and less travel-intensive conference designs using participatory methods.

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“…where ∆pn is the relative change in particle number emissions (dimensionless value between 0 and 1) [57]. Using liquid hydrogen instead of conventional kerosene changes both the particle emission and the probability of contrail formation.…”

Section: Climate Impactmentioning

confidence: 99%

Climate Impact Reduction Potentials of Synthetic Kerosene and Green Hydrogen Powered Mid-Range Aircraft Concepts

et al. 2022

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One of aviation’s major challenges for the upcoming decades is the reduction in its climate impact. As synthetic kerosene and green hydrogen are two promising candidates, their potentials in decreasing the climate impact is investigated for the mid-range segment. Evolutionary advancements for 2040 are applied, first with an conventional and second with an advanced low-NOx and low-soot combustion chamber. Experts and methods from all relevant disciplines are involved, starting from combustion, turbofan engine, overall aircraft design, fleet level, and climate impact assessment, allowing a sophisticated and holistic evaluation. The main takeaway is that both energy carriers have the potential to strongly reduce the fleet level climate impact by more than 75% compared with the reference. Applying a flight-level constraint of 290 and a cruise Mach number of 0.75, causing 5% higher average Direct Operating Costs (DOC), the reduction is even more than 85%. The main levers to achieve this are the advanced combustion chamber, an efficient contrail avoidance strategy, in this case a pure flight-level constraint, and the use of CO2 neutral energy carrier, in a descending priority order. Although vehicle efficiency gains only lead to rather low impact reduction, they are very important to compensate the increased costs of synthetic fuels or green hydrogen.

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Evaluating the climate impact of aviation emission scenarios towards the Paris agreement including COVID-19 effects

Cited by 131 publications

References 31 publications

Net-zero emissions aviation

Net-zero emissions aviation

The Need for Sustainability, Equity, and International Exchange: Perspectives of Early Career Environmental Psychologists on the Future of Conferences

Climate Impact Reduction Potentials of Synthetic Kerosene and Green Hydrogen Powered Mid-Range Aircraft Concepts

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