T&E’s roadmap to climate-neutral aviation

22 March 2022: The NGO Transport and Environment (T&E) has published its Roadmap on climate neutral aviation in Europe. The roadmap is an update to the report T&E published in 2018 as much has changed since then in aviation and climate policies.

In a commentary, T&E stated “We now face a conundrum. Aviation emissions need to fall now, but the technical solutions to achieve this take time. Thankfully, the COVID crisis has shown that while technology is scaled up, we have ways to immediately reduce the climate impact of flying. What the pandemic showed was that while aviation as a sector was crucial, not every flight ever taken was so. Physical connectivity isn’t always essential to economic growth and employment, and not every corporate deal needs face-to-face meetings.”

The report is divided in two parts: the first part contains the forecast for the sector whilst the second outlines the mitigation measures available and proposals from T&E.

On the decarbonisation forecast, it was concluded that if policymakers fail to regulate the sector, aviation emissions will keep growing. Even in the most optimistic scenario outlined by T&E, emissions are expected to rise by 36 per cent by 2050 compared to 2020 levels. The report finds that the key solution is that for the rest of the decade it is necessary to reduce flying  in order to reduce emissions. This is because:

1. cumulative emissions are what counts for global warming and the aviation sector cannot wait for the alternative fuels supply scale-up in the 2030s and 2040s to start reducing its emissions. We calculated that if aviation traffic keeps growing as expected, there will be 1 Gt CO2 more in the atmosphere compared to a scenario where demand is managed, even if decarbonisation is reached by 2050.
2. achieving decarbonisation with only technology improvements and sustainable fuels would require more than one fifth of the EU's projected domestic renewable electricity supply.
3. over-reliance on e-kerosene to decarbonise the sector is a risky strategy given that the scale and speed at which this technology will be developed is still uncertain. Finally, cutting flights is the only way to mitigate aviation’s total climate impact, something sustainable alternative fuels cannot achieve.

Therefore, T&E has investigated the potential impact of several carbon pricing and demand management measures.

• Reducing corporate travel by half compared to 2019 could save 20 per cent of emissions by 2050 and would benefit the employees, the environment and businesses.
• Introducing a tax on kerosene, as is already the case with other transport fuels, and reforming the ETS to apply a price on all of airlines’ pollution, could reduce travel demand by up to 18 per cent.
• Further leisure travel management, particularly targeting the most polluting long-haul flights, could bring 16 per cent more emissions reduction compared to carbon pricing only if traffic can be capped to 2019 levels.

You can find the full report here.