Study of the abatement options available to reduce carbon emissions from Australian international flights

Abstract

In 2012, 14 airlines emitted a combined total of 13.1Mt of CO 2 while flying 72% of the international passengers into and out of Australia. In the Asia-Pacific region, passengers and cargo traffic are predicted to grow at 6% and 5% per annum respectively from 2013 to 2033. The International Air Transport Association has committed to an average fuel efficiency improvement of 1.5% from 2009 to 2020, carbon neutral growth from 2020, and 50% reduction in CO 2 emissions by 2050 compared to 2005 levels. To develop policies for reducing aircraft emissions, policy makers need to consider the effectiveness of abatement options used to curb the growth in emissions. In this study, five scenarios were developed to evaluate abatement options that have been or will be implemented by airlines flying on Australian international routes. Analysis reveals that by acquiring more efficient aircraft and increasing the average number of passengers per flight by 10%, 15.6Mt and 29.2Mt of CO 2 would likely be emitted in 2020 and 2033 respectively, with CO 2 emissions increasing at 6.1% per annum and CO 2 efficiency dropping at 1.6% per annum. To achieve carbon neutral growth after 2020, additional Downloaded by [University of Tennessee, Knoxville] at ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT 2 abatement options will be required to reduce CO 2 emissions by a further 13.6Mt (i.e. 46.6%) in 2033.

A study of carbon dioxide emissions reduction opportunities for airlines on Australian international routes

“…If the increase in fuel used/emissions on each flight is factored in when load factors are increased by 5% and 10% then by 2033 total emissions will drop by 3.9% and 7.4% instead of 4.7% and 9.1% that is presented in Table 5.10 and in Yin et al (2016).…”

“…Chapter 5 concludes by discussing the need to determine the financial viability and ease of implementation of each abatement options for each airline. This chapter was published in the International Journal of Sustainable Transportation (Yin, Dargusch, & Halog, 2016 Chapter 7 reviews the global market-based measure for international aviation in the form of the CORSIA that was presented at the 39 th ICAO Assembly in 2016. This chapter presents an improvement to the formula used to calculate the carbon offset obligations for each airline in the CORSIA by taking into consideration an airlines relative success at meeting or exceeding the yearly CO 2 efficiency target.…”

“…Over the next 20 years, passenger and freight traffic in the Asia-Pacific region are expected to grow at an annual rate of six and five percent respectively and CO 2 emissions will reach 42.9Mt by 2033 (Airbus, 2014b;Boeing, 2014b;Yin et al, 2016).…”

“…CO2 i,y is the CO 2 emissions generated from the simulations of each abatement option using the model in Yin et al (2016). In the model, the yearly discount rate is set to 7.7 per cent.…”

“…This increase in traffic will drive CO 2 emissions up to 43Mt. However, by implementing a number of abatement strategies, emissions growth can be reduced to between 32.1Mt to 36.8Mt of CO 2 where each strategy is a combination of a number of abatement options (Yin et al, 2016). The cost at which these abatement strategies are likely to be implemented was not specified; rather, Yin et al recommended that applying these strategies could broadly include modifying the current fleet, changing current operations and renewing and adding newer more efficient aircraft to the fleet from 2013 to 2033 (Yin et al, 2016).…”