How is the aviation sector trying to cut emissions?

Aircraft use fuel, and generate CO2 emissions, in vast quantities. Normally, an aircraft’s CO2 emissions are calculated by noting the amount of fuel used on a given trip — an Aer Lingus Airbus A320 for example, will consume around 3.5-tonnes of fuel for a 1,000km flight — and dividing that by the number of passengers and the kilometres travelled, arriving at a figure of grammes of CO2 per passenger per kilometre. It’s a bit of fancy-footwork book-keeping, and how airlines are able to quote such low per-person CO2 emissions figures.

However, it’s footwork that the airline industry can’t keep up for much longer. Fuel is getting more and more expensive by the day, and while the likes of the EU have dithered for years on higher taxes on aviation fuel, at some stage the industry is going to have to face up to trying to decarbonise, or pay fines for not doing so.

In some ways, it’s already doing so. Rolls-Royce (the one that makes aircraft engines rather than luxury cars) has already flown a small single-seat electric aircraft, while Airbus has experimented with electric, hybrid, and hydrogen propulsion systems in the works. Virgin Atlantic has announced that it will run a 100 per cent renewable fuels flight this year, while Lufthansa has promised the same for delegates flying to a United Nations climate summit.

Flying ills

However, while sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) — a mixture of recycled cooking fats, bio-fuels, and, more recently, high-tech carbon-capturing synthetic petrol — seems like an easy fix to all flying ills, the unpleasant fact is that it’s not ready for prime time just yet. Prof Tom Conlon of the UCD School of Business said: “The obvious solution is SAF, but they’re not scaleable yet. I saw numbers recently that indicated that using renewable energy to create sustainable fuel for aviation would be on a par with the total amount of renewable energy that we have in Europe.”

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As Conlon points out, we can create new generations of aircraft which are more fuel-efficient, and designed around SAF, but aircraft stay in service for a long, long time. The Boeing 737s which Ryanair uses in such vast numbers have been modernised, but the basic design dates back to the 1960s.

It seems inevitable, then, that airlines are going to have to face higher taxation on carbon-hungry travel, and that those costs will be passed on to us, the travellers. Especially anyone travelling to or from Ireland, from which other options are slow and limited.

According to Chris Brown, partner and head of strategy at KPMG: “Our research suggests that airlines focusing on big net zero claims, being self-congratulatory in tone on SAF agreements or unrealistic as to the impact of having a hydrogen fleet could see that backfire. Instead, paying passengers expect airlines to get on with what’s realistic, to be transparent on the challenges, to grasp the easier wins as they become available and ringfence any ticket premium for those specific initiatives, with such initiatives on a typical short-haul flight being covered by the $50 (€48) premium that many customers expect to have to incur without impacting their frequency of flying.”

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Those “easier wins” could be something as simple as better scheduling. Prof John Cotter of UCD Smurfit School of Business says: “The load on planes is extremely important. If you’re running two flights at 30 per cent capacity — which many do — then just put those passengers into one flight, at 60 per cent capacity, and straight away you’ve halved your emissions.”

Other easy wins could, according to KPMG, involve reorganising Europe’s air traffic control so that aircraft don’t have to waste fuel on circuitous flights around strikes, or even managing and incentivising contrail management — the wispy trails of condensed ice and water left at high altitude by aircraft can contribute to global warming, but can also act as cooling cloud cover if generated in the right place at the right time.

Irish exposure

Ireland is particularly exposed to upheaval in the aviation industry. Not only do we need aircraft to be able to leave and return to our island in a timely fashion, but Ireland is home to Europe’s biggest airline fleet — Ryanair — and is also home to many of the world’s biggest aircraft leasing firms. According to Cotter, it’s a two-in-five chance that any aircraft you board, anywhere in the world, is leased out of Ireland.

That presents potential danger, but also opportunity says Brown: “From a policy perspective, Ireland — reliant on air connectivity for its economic wellbeing — can be a strong advocate for synthetic fuel production ramp-up, European air space redesign and contrail mitigation.”