The aviation industry emitted around 915 million tonnes of CO2 in 2019 and is responsible for 4% of all man-made activities that drive climate change.
Because of this, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) in 2021, approved a resolution to hit net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.
The sustainable aviation goals of the Cambridge study
1. Reduce flight speed
If slight speeds are reduced by 15%, fuel burn will also decrease by 5-7%, according to the study. However, this could add as much as an extra 50 minutes to the journey.
Another catch is that this would require a “whole systems process change” between airports, airlines and manufacturers, wrote an author of the paper, Professor Rob Miller who is the director of the University of Cambridge Whittle Laboratory.
2. Fly newer planes
Getting new plans can reduce fuel burn by 11-14% and the study suggests manufacturers like Boeing and Airbus to reduce their fleet retirement age from 30 years to 15 years by 2050.
However, both Boeing and Airbus had already planned to double aircraft production by 2050. Halving the retirement age would need them to increase production by another 50%.
3. Change altitudes to avoid contrails
The study says contrails impact climate the same way as a plane's CO2 emmissions do. Contrails are trails of crystallised water vapor trails produced by the aircraft's exhaust or by changes in air pressure.
They can be avoided if the flight path is altered to avoid regions known as Ice Supersaturated Regions (ISSRs), where contrails form.
“The warming impact from the extra fuel burned for contrail avoidance is minimal, at least 25 times smaller than the possible climate impact of contrails,” the study says.
However, this can also potentially raise ticket prices by around 1% for the extra fuel needed and air traffic control costs.
4. Use sustainable aviation fuels
Sustainable aviation fuels (SAFs) can also increase ticket costs by as much as 81% since flying a Biomass-to-Liquid (BtL) powered aircraft leads to a 33% increase in fuel costs and hydrogen power increases costs by 33%.
“As things stand there is not going to be enough SAF to meet our goal of Net Zero 2050. Production will need to be scaled up 80 or 100 times even to reach 10pc SAF by 2030, and that requires urgent government action,” the Telegraph report quoted Holly Boyd-Boland, Virgin Atlantic’s vice president for corporate development as saying/
5. Restrict domestic flights
In France, its not possible to take a domestic flight if a railway alterenative takes less than 2.5 hours, which cuts emissions by up to 95% per passenger per kilometre, according to the study.
This is despite the fact that only around 7% of global aviation emissions are from regional flights, that too mostly from the US.
