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Ireland's political and cultural magazine
62June 2015
W
HAT do the recent news
reports about the sale of
Aer Lingus, an earth-
quake in Nepal and the
collapse of the Greek
economy all have in common?
The answer is the importance of air
travel for tourism, global connectivity
and economic growth.
The aviation industry as a whole con-
tributes .% of Irish GDP, and
supports up to , jobs, in addition
to contributing to taxes and indirect
spending. In Nepal, where a recent
earthquake has devastated the coun-
try’s infrastructure and killed over
, people, the travel and tourism
sector provides .% of that country’s
total employment. Leisure accounts for
over % of the spending.
And in Greece, that country’s eco-
nomic crisis has brought a flood of
tourists seeking good value and availing
of cheap deals from the UK in particu-
lar. Tourism brings revenue of over
€bn to Greece annually and has seen
a growth of over % in the past year
alone.
There is a problem, however. New
(jet) airliner models in the first decade
of the st Century were barely more
efficient on a seat-mile basis than the
latest propellor-powered airliners of
the late s.
Carbon-dioxide emissions from avia-
tion, while small at just % of global
emissions, are growing faster than any
other source. Globally, about . mil-
lion people flew daily ( billion occupied
seats per year) in , twice the total
in . U.S. airlines alone burned
about . billion gallons of fuel during
the twelve months between October
and September . They also
originate from just a tiny fraction of the
world population, which is dominated
by affluent leisure travellers (that
includes us, here in Ireland, flying once
a year to Mediterranean holiday
resorts).
Dramatically, the Intergovernmental
Panel of Climate Change estimates that
the warming effect of aircraft emissions
is about . times that of carbon diox-
ide alone, due to the other gases
produced by planes. (A higher figure of
. was previously used, but a more
conservative one of . is now pre-
ferred, and is the one commonly used).
So when discussing aviation’s contri-
bution to greenhouse gas emissions, we
need to take cognisance of the peculiar
status this sector enjoys in our eco-
nomic framework and in our cultural
attitudes to wealth and personal free-
dom. Let’s face it: flying is enormously
environmentally costly but we in the
first world perceive it to be a precious
luxury, one that we are not prepared to
forego. So that’s why it is ‘peculiar’, and
we should be wary of falling for argu-
ments that would allow aviation
emissions growth to be offset against
those of other sectors.
So what should we do about CO
emissions from aviation? Well the first
thing to note is that these emissions are
not currently regulated at all, except in
the EU under the Emissions Trading
Scheme. This measure gives airlines an
emissions allowance as a percentage of
the EU aviation market, over which the
airlines must pay for emission rights. It
cost Ryanair for instance €.m last
year, but they received % of their
emission rights free of charge. The cost
per passenger in would only have
been c per person, hardly a punitive
tax. This mechanism only applies to
flights originating and ending within
the EU and the cost has largely been
passed onto consumers with no effect
on demand or CO.
While the EU effort is clearly a start,
if the desire to hold global warming
below °C is serious, it must be trans-
lated into an effective global effort to
reduce emissions by at least % by
, and not the % reduction
favoured by the International Civil Avi-
ation Organisation (ICAO).
Under the Kyoto Protocol, responsi-
bility for the design of an effective
voluntary regime was left up to none
other than the aforementioned ICAO so
Also in this section:
In the Sticks 64
Book review: ‘Feral’ by George
Monbiot 65
ENVIRONMENT
Air travel in the climate age. By Sadhbh O’Neill
Don’t go far
General
carbon
emissions
need to
decline to at
least 80%
below 2005
levels
“
the past
June 2015 63
that airlines could figure out themselves
how to square their actual emissions
pathways with global expectations of
limiting warming to °C.
Given what we know about the inertia
of energy systems and the incremental
rate of technological advancement, pol-
icy-makers and the travelling public
alike need to acknowledge an inevitable
constraint on air travel. At some point,
and as soon as possible, emissions need
to peak and then decline to at least %
below levels. And if we want to
stick to the °C target we will have to
peak straight away. Yes, that means no
more growth at all.
However, the aviation sector is still
witnessing growth even in ‘mature’
markets such as the US, where emis-
sions have increased by % in
years. The global projections to
are for a rise in passenger/km of up to
%. Just to put this into perspective,
by emissions from aviation were
of similar magnitude to those from the
entire continents of either Africa or
South America. Dublin Airport, for
example, is planning and developing for
a doubling of passenger numbers from
numbers to m annually by
and for up to m by . In
the numbers rose to m, up %
on due to the addition of new
routes and additional flights on
existing services, which followed the
Government’s decision to drop the € a
passenger air travel tax.
Unlike other sectors, it is simply
impossible to ‘decarbonise’ air travel.
Technological ‘fixes’, including vaunted
hydrogen and solar, are simply less
likely to be feasible than in other sec-
tors including other transport. The
International Panel on Climate Change
has said: “there would not appear to be
any practical alternatives to kerosene-
based fuels for commercial jet aircraft
for the next several decades”. Adding an
electric drive to the airplane’s nose
wheel may improve fuel efficiency
during ground handling. This addition
would allow taxiing without use of the
main engines.
Other opportunities arise from the
optimisation of airline timetables, route
networks and flight frequencies to
increase load factors.
Technological ‘improvements’ can
offer at best -% per annum in fuel
efficiencies, but it takes decades to
replace entire carbon-profligate fleets,
including current advance orders; and
we don’t have decades.
To curb growth it will be necessary to
do what is politically and culturally
deeply unpopular: introduce a morato-
rium on airport expansion; bring in
price mechanisms to curb demand
growth (travel-tax increases again) and
even an individual carbon quota scheme
so that individuals can be made person-
ally liable for their aviation-related
emissions. The net point is that aviation
is heading to being a grossly dispropor-
tionate percentage of carbon emissions
by . Just consider the moral impli-
cations of constraining growth in other
crucial sectors and impoverished coun-
tries, so that a wealthy elite can
continue to fly. That’s the insuperable
problem with current aviation
projections.
Of course, it’s true, Ireland can’t do
these things alone. But they will have to
be done eventually, so the Irish Civil
Aviation Authority should stop oppos-
ing the ETS and support measures to
effectively regulate and reduce emis-
sions fairly at a global level. But it is true
that the consequences of reducing air-
travel demand are very serious. Since it
is such a key component of the glo-
balised economy, targeted and radical
reductions from the aviation sector
could trigger an economic crisis or even
worse.
More importantly though, we need to
move away from attributing blame for
these emissions to Michael O’Leary for
making air travel so irresistibly cheap,
and towards a more considered under-
standing of our collective responsibility
for, and dependence on cheap-fossil
energy. We may be forced to accept
limits to our definition of personal free-
dom and the attachment we all have to
foreign travel. The idea of submitting
our own private consumption (however
justified it might be) to regulation by the
government through individual carbon
quotas will take some getting used to. A
recent study, published in the journal
Environmental Science and Technology
by researchers at IIASA and Center for
International Climate and Environmen-
tal Research (CICERO) calculates the
climate impact for passenger trips of
-, km – typical distances for
business or holiday trips. It shows that
while air travel continues to have the
biggest climate impact per distance
travelled, the choices that people make
about how they drive or take public
transport make a big difference in how
much they contribute to climate
change.
“Traveling alone in a large car can be
as bad for the climate as flying, but
driving with three in a small car could
have an equally low impact as a train
ride,” says IIASA’s Jens Borken-Kleefeld.
A , km trip alone in a big car could
emit as much as kg of carbon diox-
ide (CO), the researchers calculate,
while a train trip or carpooling in a
small car could emit as little as kg of
CO for each traveler.
Air travel has by far the biggest
impact on climate per distance traveled,
because it can lead to contrails and for-
mation of cirrus clouds that have a
strong climate impact, as well as ozone.
These mechanisms have a strong effect
on the climate, but cause warming over
much shorter periods of time than CO.
But it is important not to be fooled into
equivalising planes and cars for exam-
ple: a return trip to New York may use a
year’s average car emissions for an indi-
vidual: without planes the journey
would probably not take place – a good
thing, environmentally.
Depressingly, trains and even boats
do not necessarily seem to be much
more efficient than planes, though ulti-
mately trains can be fuelled by
renewable electricity. Still for the
moment the lesson seems to be to avoid
long-distance travel. •
Unlike other
sectors, it
is simply
impossible to
‘decarbonise’
air travel.
Technological
‘fixes’are
simply less
likely to
be feasible
than in other
sectors
“
To measure the
carbon footprint of
your foreign holiday
this summer, check
out http://calculator.
carbonfootprint.com/
calculator
the future
