When talking about emissions, aviation has an unfair biased associated with it. The large aircraft are assumed to horrible on fuel efficiency and produced horrendous emissions to the environment but that isn't the case at all. In fact, the large jets such as the Airbus A380 and Boeing 737 actually are efficient as most modern compact cars. According to the Air Transport Action Group, aviation is responsible for 12% of the C02 emissions from all transportation, which is much lower than road transport at 74%. Most of the emissions from aviation are from the long distance flights and at this time there are no other practical means of transport for those trips. Approximately 80% of aviation emissions are produced from flights of longer than 1,500 km, or 931 miles (ATAG, 2016). Due to the Paris Agreement and the high fuel prices, aviation has a very strong incentive to increase efficiency even more in order to save costs.
The specifics to the proposed reduction plan are actually pretty simple. The overall idea of the plan is starting in 2027, emissions will be enforced to the 2020 level. These enforced regulation will be standard for the 191 countries associated with ICAO (Green, 2016). Any emissions over the 2020 level must be offset by the airlines. The offsetting of emissions will be done through the market based measure, MBM. The MBM will require each carrier to purchase carbon offsets, which they will then be able to sell off to other carriers if they are more efficient than they are expected to be.
Under the newly elected administration, I don't think that the Paris Agreement will work out. Trump seems to be against most of the agreements. For example, it has even been said that he is against the NATO and wants to repel that agreement. If he wants to reply NATO, which has been an agreement for several years between many countries, why would he want to agree to the Paris Agreement. The reduction laws within the agreement are unnecessary and will be very expensive to the United States. In fact, several countries have already tried to create a emission reduction law and it was shut down to due to the expensive costs to U.S. air carries.
I personally think that the reduction laws are an overreaction. Not only has the aviation industry been working on efficiency, but so is every other industry. Currently, fuel is approximately 33% of the operating costs. In order for airlines to make more money, the easiest way will be to increase efficiency to decrease fuel costs. Aircraft are already very efficient compared to our past history. Jets in today's industry are 80% more efficient per seat kilometer than the early jets in 1960 (ATAG, 2016). This being said, airlines are working on efficiency and I think that the reduction laws will actually make it harder for the aviation industry because there will be fines associated with the efficiency of aircraft.
References:
Air Transport Action Group. (2016, May). Facts and Figures. ATAG. Retrieved
fromhttp://www.atag.org/facts-and-figures.html
Green, J. (2016, October 14). The World is About to get Tough on Aviation Emissions, Here's What
you Need to Know. The Washington Post. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/
news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/10/14/the-world-is-about-to-get-tough-on-aviation-emissions-
heres-what-you-need-to-know/
I agree that forced emissions reductions are an overreaction. You are correct in that jet engines are more efficient than ever especially when looking at per seat kilometer miles travelled. Profit margins in aviation are so slim that air carriers are already incentivized to be as fuel efficient as possible.
ReplyDeleteI like what you mentioned about the aviation industry already working on efficiency. As you mentioned (and I found similar data as well), a third of the operating costs are for fuel, and as such, the airlines are already working to become more efficient and burn less fuel, even without the additional regulations implemented by this agreement.
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