Posted for Anjali Nayar
The international airline industry has pledged to curb growth in their carbon dioxide emissions by 2020 and reduce carbon emissions by 50% by 2050, the head of the global aviation association IATA said on Monday.
“No other industry is as ambitious,” said Giovanni Bisignani at the International Air Transport Association’s annual meeting in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. “Demand will continue to increase but any expansion of our carbon footprint will be compensated.”
Bisignani pointed out that international aviation emissions dropped by 7% this year. But only 2% of the drop is because of investments in technology and fuel efficiency; the other 5% drop is because of reduced capacity linked to the global recession.
Global aviation accounts for about 2% of all human-caused carbon dioxide emissions and this could rise to 3% by 2050, according to the International Panel on Climate Change. A system to keep the industry’s emissions in check was never included in the Kyoto Protocol climate deal because of the “special” international nature of the business: who is responsible for emissions reductions, for example, on an Air France flight from London to Madrid, using an American-made jet, with passengers and freight from around the world?
The airline industry has been trying to come up with other ways to reduce emissions that don’t involve a division of the burden; namely by relying on improvements in aircraft fuel efficiency, by creating shorter flight routes, and better take off and landing procedures.
The 2020 and 2050 goals are realistic, says Quentin Browell, a spokesman for IATA, speaking on the phone from Kuala Lumpur. The IATA estimates that the fuel efficiency of new aircrafts such as the Airbus 380 and the Boeing 787 are about 25% more efficient than the average fuel efficiency of airline fleets today.
The Wall Street Journal has suggested this may be one of the reasons United Airlines plans to spend US $10 billion on up to 150 new planes.
But a new report by the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) also published on Monday suggests improvements in technology won’t be enough to reduce the airline industry’s emissions.
The GAO report, Aviation and Climate Change, states some current technologies “may have limited potential to generate future reductions,” and some promising technologies are years away “from being available, and developing and adopting them is likely to be costly.”
The report also suggests that incentives for green solutions will depend on the level and stability of fuel prices. Ultimately, it suggests, the growth of commercial aviation, even if improvements are adopted, are unlikely to greatly reduce emissions by 2050.
Motivating the industry to invest in green technologies will be difficult when business is clearly bad. Last year, the airline industry lost about $10.4 billion because of a spike in oil prices and the onset of the global recession. This year a loss of another $9 billion is predicted, according to IATA.
The carbon targets are voluntary, so there are no repercussions if they are not met, admits Lorne Riley, a spokesman for IATA.
The French press agency AFP has quoted Qatar Airways Chief Executive Akbar Al Baker as calling the 2020 deadline a “hot potato,” that has been handed to airlines, and which will ultimately be passed on to passengers. “The whole exercise will make air travel so expensive and we will have to pass the expenditures to passengers,” he is quoted as saying.
Bisignani said the IATA was still finalising the cost associated with the carbon neutral growth by 2020 program but expected it to be in the range of billions of dollars, according to the same AFP report.
Image: Giovanni Bisignani, by IATA