Marginal climate and air quality costs of aviation emissions

Abstract

Aviation emissions have been found to cause 5% of global anthropogenic radiative forcing and ∼16 000 premature deaths annually due to impaired air quality. When aiming to reduce these impacts, decision makers often face trade-offs between different emission species or impacts in different times and locations. To inform rational decision-making, this study computes aviation's marginal climate and air quality impacts per tonne of species emitted and accounts for the altitude, location, and chemical composition of emissions. Climate impacts are calculated using a reduced-order climate model, and air quality-related health impacts are quantified using marginal atmospheric sensitivities to emissions from the adjoint of the global chemistry-transport model GEOS-Chem in combination with concentration response functions and the value of statistical life. The results indicate that 90% of the global impacts per unit of fuel burn are attributable to cruise emissions, and that 64% of all damages are the result of air quality impacts. Furthermore, nitrogen oxides (NO x ), carbon dioxide (CO 2 ), and contrails are collectively responsible for 97% of the total impact. Applying our result metrics to an example, we find that a 20% NO x stringency scenario for new aircraft would reduce the net atmospheric impacts by 700 m USD during the first year of operation, even if the NO x emission reductions cause a small increase in CO 2 emissions of 2%. In such a way, the damage metrics can be used to rapidly evaluate the atmospheric impacts of market growth as well as emissions trade-offs of aviation-related policies or technology improvements.

Post-combustion emissions control in aero-gas turbine engines

“…The environmental costs normalized by fuel burn (from degraded air quality and climate related damages) are shown in Figure 11. The baseline costs are consistent with recent work by Grobler et al 76 .…”

Greater fuel efficiency is potentially preferable to reducing NOx emissions for aviation’s climate impacts

“…Coherent comparative assessments that would consider both climate and air quality impacts are needed. There are just a few studies that try to tackle this issue [34][35][36] and none that would consider these aspects under changing background conditions.…”

Electric Training Aircraft in Colombia: A Review of Design, Manufacture and Feasibility

“…Researches published by M.I.T 1 in the Environmental Research Letters 2 [1] of IOP Publishing, say that commercial aviation produces 5% of the world environmental impact with the Jet-Fuel consumption [2,3], Figure 1 and Figure 2. For Colombia, according to the liquid fuel demand projection report by the MinEnergía 3 and the UPME 4 , the average annual Jet Fuel consumption growth rate from 2016 year to the 2035 year will be 0.9%, regarding 1.9% of gasoline and 2.4% of ACPM [4].…”