How to fly more without continuing to pollute?

How to increase the volume of passengers in the air sector while dramatically reducing greenhouse gas emissions from airplanes?

These are the main elements of the question.

What does air traffic represent?

The air sector transported 4,500 million passengers in rl 2019, which meant a production of 900 million tons of CO2, that is, approximately 2% of global emissions. By 2050, it is estimated that the number of passengers will double, which in principle would also mean doubling the number of passengers. CO2 emission.

This prediction sparked environmental mobilization, with campaigns such as “Flygskam” (“embarrassment to take the plane”), in Sweden in 2018.

Between 2009 and 2019, airlines improved their energy efficiency by 21.4%, according to the International Air Transport Association (IATA). Something that does not prevent the sector’s emissions from continuing to increase.

What are the commitments?

IATA pledged in early October to have “net zero emissions” of CO2 by 2050. When the initial goal was simply to divide them by two.

At the state level, the European Union wants to reduce its emissions by 55% between now and 2030, compared to 1990. This includes the airline sector. The United States, for its part, wants to cut emissions from commercial aviation by 20% compared to the current trajectory.

What are the instruments to achieve it?

Europeans hope that technology and infrastructure improvements – whether with new materials, cheaper engines, better air traffic management, hydrogen-fueled aircraft, or a greater role for electrical power – will help reduce by half the emissions.

IATA however believes that only 14% of the target will be achieved.

To achieve “net zero emissions”, the sector’s plans go through carbon offset mechanisms (such as planting trees), something criticized by environmental NGOs, who consider that the only thing that is achieved is to displace the problem.

What is the role of sustainable fuels?

“The only silver bullet to decarbonize aviation is sustainable fuels,” explains Brian Moran, in charge of sustainable development at Boeing.

IATA estimates that two-thirds of the decarbonization effort should fall on sustainable aviation fuels (CAS), produced from cooking oil, algae, wood residues or “biomass” products.

The European Commission plans to establish an obligation to incorporate 2% CAS in aviation kerosene in 2025, 5% in 2030 and 63% in 2050. Boeing and Airbus anticipate that their aircraft will be able to fly with 100% CAS at the end of that decade.

CAS currently cost four times as much as kerosene and, what is more delicate, it is not easy to get them. They represent less than 0.1% of the 360,000 million liters of fuel used by aviation in 2019.

A whole new sector must emerge, to increase production and lower the price.

The EU believes this can be achieved through new taxes on kerosene for domestic flights, while the United States proposes tax breaks.

This can be achieved?

The boss of Airbus, Guillaume Faury, thinks that the technological innovations in the airplanes, and in particular the hydrogen airplane, will be ready “but it is not only about creating the airplane, but about regulatory agencies of the energy sector”.

But biomass is a limited resource. As Jo Dardenne, from the European Federation for Transport and Environment (T&E, in English) explains: “We consider that by 2050, advanced biofuels that from waste will cover 11% of the needs of the airline sector.”

The sector is therefore betting on future synthetic fuels, or electrofuels, made with hydrogen produced with renewable electricity and with CO2 captured in the atmosphere.

However, to produce electrofuels that add up to 10% of current aviation kerosene consumption is equivalent to the total electricity production of Spain and France together, explains Timur Gül, head of the International Energy Agency (IAE).

“The technologies that we want to develop to reduce emissions from the aviation sector will be extremely energetic,” adds Dardenne, for whom there is no other choice but to “change the paradigm”, that is, fly less.