Is Aviation Technology going in the right direction regarding Climate Impact?

Abstract

The aviation industry is shouting out its aim to reach ”net-zero carbon” by 2050. Nevertheless, air traffic is expected to grow up until then, and if fuel consumption is reduced by new technologies and aircraft, other sources of global
warming such as N Ox emissions and contrails are less considered. Therefore, the climate impact improvement of new technologies compared to older ones is not straightforward and requires a deep analysis. This work performs such an analysis via three steps: The selection of a new fleet to be compared with the actual fleet (2019), a comparison between the two fleets emissions via an Aviation Emission Inventory code, and a climate impact assessment with the tool AirClim. The new fleet analysed consists of the replacement of 14 old (entry in service before 2002) Airbus and Boeing aircraft with their new versions (entry in service between 2011 & 2018). The results show a reduction of 8.7% of fuel consumed by total aviation just by replacing the 14 old aircraft with the new ones. On the other hand, it leads to an 8.0% N Ox emissions increase. Nevertheless, the climate impact assessment concludes that this N Ox emissions increase lowers the surface temperature change due to aviation. This is explained by the strong influence of N Ox emissions location on its climate impact. Overall, this new fleet leads to a decrease in temperature change due to aviation in 2050 of 5.3 mK (-5.2%). This work gives important conclusions on the priorities that need to be set for the development of ’greener’ aviation technologies.