Analyses – Aviation in focus

There is an increasing demand on reduction of environmental and climate impact from aviation. One reason is that aviation was not included in the climate agreement signed in Paris in 2015. This has led to requirements on the air industry themselves to introduce measures for climate gas emission reduction. This is not an easy task as it includes a variety of contradictory conditions and requirements. The key challenge is the increase of air travel and to some extent air cargo transport meanwhile the climate impact from transport is expected to diminish. When the EU some years ago introduced the emission trading scheme, ETS on air transport within, as well as to and from the EU, several other states strongly opposed the system and planned severe sanctions on the EU if international aviation was included. Some large countries formed the coalition for the unwilling during the protest and eventually the EU eliminated international aviation from the ETS. The EU did however raise the issue of reintroducing the ETS if an international system was not developed by the industry within a certain time limit.

ICAO, International Civil Aviation Organization shouldered the responsibility of the development of an international system. The system is now discussed and negotiated among the member states in order to enable the ICAO General Assembly in the autumn 2016 to decide on its coming principal design. The carbon trading system presently proposed by ICAO only includes international aviation which embraces some 60% of the total aviation generated carbon dioxide emissions. In addition an extended proposal is discussed and is part of the negotiations which would include some 90% of the emissions from international aviation by 2020. The basis is a Carbon Neutral growth baseline starting by year 2020.

In addition to the carbon trading system the environmental committee of ICAO also presented new mandatory regulations on increasing fuel efficiency in new aircrafts from 2020. After a gradual implementation the regulations will include all aircrafts manufactured in large series by 2028. Estimation claims this will reduce the emissions of CO2 by 650 million tons CO2 between 2020 and 2040.

Another recent progress within aviation is that the environmental committee decided to introduce a new estimation standard on particulate matters through ICAO annex 16 volume II. Previous estimations have been based on smoke numbers, but by this standard requirement it includes mass and numbers of PM which makes emission comparable with other modes of traffic.

Measures to reduce air noise are an on-going work. Within ICAOs there is the “Balanced Approach” that in brief includes measures on noise reduction at source, restrictions minimizing noise, operative measures and mitigating measures at receiver.

For smaller aircrafts a remaining challenge is emission of led to air. In air petrol led is still added to the fuel which in road transport was gradually eliminated in the end of the 1980´s. The emissions of led from road traffic in Sweden was 260 ton in 1990. In total the annual emissions of the added led in smaller aircrafts is 1.4 ton, which are 14% of the total emissions of led to air in Sweden. Since a non-toxic environment is one of the main environmental objectives this should be a beneficial measure for society. In comparison, the annual emissions of led from road transport in Sweden is today 2 tons. Several of the small aircrafts with engines below 200 hp can run on led free petrol but there are practical implications. Access to led free petrol is geographically and seasonally limited. Since this petrol requires separate tank vehicles it leads to small volumes i.e. costly a distribution for the smaller airports and private aviation organizations. The latter have also been prohibited to sell their led free fuels to commercial air transport companies by the tax authority which further increases the cost of distribution. This means that some of the commercial operators need to fly additional distances to get hold of this fuel from an approved supplier even if it is available at the local airport..

In summary there are several positive conditions decreasing the environmental and climate impact from air transport, but there are several remaining economic and political challenges to resolve.