Transport & Environment (T&E) have produced a report on how to decarbonise (ie. zero carbon) European transport by 2050. It has many suggestions on aviation. A few quotes from the report: “By driving out the use of fossil kerosene fuel in aviation through carbon pricing and requiring aircraft to switch to synthetic fuels, and advanced biofuels to a very limited extent, the climate impact of flying can be reduced dramatically. Zero emission electrofuels and very low carbon advanced sustainable biofuels can be produced today and deployed immediately using existing engines and infrastructure.” … “While synfuels can solve aviation’s CO2 problem, the non-CO2 problem will require additional measures to be mitigated.” … “In Europe [aviation] emissions have doubled since 1990, and globally they could, without action, double or treble by 2050.” … “Aviation is at risk of having its emissions locked in due to the growth in passenger numbers and aircraft fleet, consuming the limited carbon budget to remain within the 1.5°C and 2°C targets of the Paris Agreement.” … “By 2030, advanced biofuels are expected to contribute only 3.5% of all transport fuels (including cars, trucks, aviation) and their growth beyond this date is likely to be constrained due to land availability and competing industries.” … “ICAO, with its weak target of net 2020 emissions and reliance on offsetting instead of cutting emissions, is only capable of delivering a global minimum effort. Much more ambitious action” is needed.
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T&E report on how to decarbonise European transport by 2050 – including aviation
How to decarbonise European transport by 2050
Transport is Europe’s biggest climate problem accounting for 27% of its GHG emissions in 2017. Transport pollution is causing the illness and premature deaths of hundreds of thousands of Europeans. Meanwhile the EU spends over 200 billion a year importing oil to power its transport fleet. A shift in spending from imported oil to domestically produced technology and energy would not only have major economic benefits but would also help eliminate transport pollution and carbon dioxide emissions.
This report summarises a series of studies by Transport & Environment. (T&E analysed pathways for decarbonisation in the road freight, aviation, shipping and car sectors.) It demonstrates that transport can and must be decarbonised by 2050 at the very latest, not only to limit global warming but also to ensure Europe’s competitiveness, its energy sovereignty and the health and well-being of its 500 million citizens.
https://www.transportenvironment.org/publications/how-decarbonise-european-transport-2050
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Below are some extracts from the report, about decarbonising aviation, including biofuels and electrofuels
The goal of this paper is to describe how transport can be decarbonised, and the implications for other sectors, particularly electricity production. The paper covers all transport modes: cars, vans, land freight (trucks and trains), ships and airplanes. In the case of aviation and shipping, we looked into how to reduce and then decarbonise the equivalent of energy sold to those modes in Europe, i.e. departing flights and voyages.
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By driving out the use of fossil kerosene fuel in aviation through carbon pricing and requiring aircraft to switch to synthetic fuels, and advanced biofuels to a very limited extent, the climate impact of flying can be reduced dramatically. Zero emission electrofuels and very low carbon advanced sustainable biofuels can be produced today and deployed immediately using existing engines and infrastructure. Electrofuels are produced by combining hydrogen with carbon dioxide, but to do this sustainably the hydrogen must be produced using renewable electricity and the CO2 captured directly from the air. Estimates on the additional cost of synthetic kerosene vary with some studies claiming cost parity in 2050 but this would require very cheap electricity. In our report we assumed synthetic kerosene will remain more expensive and tickets become around 23% more expensive. While synfuels can solve aviation’s CO2 problem, the non-CO2 problem will require additional measures to be mitigated.
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Figure 3 below (Page 9) summarises the share of emissions per mode. Aviation and navigation represent the emissions associated with fuel sold in the EU including use for international trips. In the context of this report, international trips refer to flights and voyages between two different countries, either within the EU or outside the EU. Only domestic navigation and aviation refer to trips within the same member state. It is an important consideration, because some pieces of analysis tend to exclude international aviation (at least extra-EU flights) and international navigation.
Figure 3: EU GHG transport shares in 2016
Domestic aviation.1.28% International aviation 12.12%
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Aviation is already a major and growing emitter. In Europe its emissions have doubled since 1990, and globally they could, without action, double or treble by 2050. Such emissions growth needs to be reversed and brought to zero by 2050 if we are to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement. Aviation is at risk of having its emissions locked in due to the growth in passenger numbers and aircraft fleet, consuming the limited carbon budget to remain within the 1.5°C and 2°C targets of that Agreement.
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By 2030, advanced biofuels are expected to contribute only 3.5% of all transport fuels (including cars, trucks, aviation) and their growth beyond this date is likely to be constrained due to land availability and competing industries.
To produce sufficient synthetic fuels to power all passenger cars in 2050 in the baseline scenario would require clean electricity production equivalent to 68% of the size of the current EU electricity production, due to the inefficiency of both the production process and ICEs, as explained in a section below. This does not take into account the other sectors, such as aviation, might actually depend on synthetic fuels to decarbonise. Similarly, the gas industry equally cannot produce sufficient biomethane sustainably from wastes and residues to power a European car fleet, while it should be prioritised in sectors currently using fossil gas, and fossil gas is not an option if cars are to be decarbonised.
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In energy terms, bunkers are the energy consumption of ships and aircraft. While domestic flights are covered by national targets, often times emissions from international flights and voyages are excluded. The Kyoto Protocol requested states to work through the UN’s aviation and shipping agencies, the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) and the International Maritime Organization (IMO), to develop measures to limit emissions from the sector.
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The Paris Agreement has upended this approach, as it requires parties to develop economy-wide targets and therefore include international aviation and shipping. Furthermore the Paris Agreement requires complete decarbonisation of all sectors of all economies. ICAO, with its weak target of net 2020 emissions and reliance on offsetting instead of cutting emissions, is only capable of delivering a global minimum effort. Much more ambitious action at national and regional level, of the sort proposed below, is required.
In shipping, countries are currently attempting to regulate maritime emissions through the IMO with the EU’s 2023 deadline looming large. Currently, the IMO has a target of reducing emissions by at least 50% by 2050, which is far from decarbonisation in explicit terms. Experience, notably with aviation at ICAO, shows that international agreements tend to fall short of the required stringency in order to exact necessary behavioural, technological and economic changes in the industry. Therefore, it is likely, possibly imperative that complementary and supplementary regional actions will have to be taken to put the maritime industry on a sustainable decarbonisation pathway.
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3.4.1. Aviation
Synthesis of Roadmap to decarbonising
European aviation:
While uncertainties exist, we do know that the sector will have a substantial fuel demand well into the 2030s, 2040s and beyond, the period when our economy needs to increasingly decarbonise. T&E’s decarbonisation report put forward measures to limit that fuel requirement, but ultimately the remaining and substantial fuel demand will need to have its carbon content eliminated. The process of cutting and then decarbonising that fuel demand was the focus of that study. The report found that the expected technology and operations improvements will not mitigate the expected fuel demand and emissions growth from aviation. Generating incremental efficiency improvements from current aircraft designs is becoming ever more costly and difficult. Further operational improvements remain possible but do not achieve decarbonisation and require the right policies to be in place. To significantly reduce the expected fossil fuel demand and ultimately eliminate it from the sector would require further measures. Carbon pricing needs to play a central role in bringing forward further reductions in fuel demand. Exempt from kerosene taxation and with most European aviation emissions excluded from the EU ETS, there is much that needs to be done.
The report showed that introducing fiscal measures that, combined, represent a carbon price equivalent to €150 per tonne can moderate demand growth from the sector through incentivising a combination of design and operational efficiency improvements and modal shift. Other measures highlighted by the report include stricter fuel efficiency standards and incentives to speed up fleet renewal. Our report found that, combined, these measures could cut fuel demand by some 12 Mtoe, or 16.9% in 2050 compared to a business as usual scenario. However that still leaves substantial and increased fuel demand in 2050. The report examined how the carbon footprint of the remaining fuel demand could be cut and where possible eliminated with today’s technology this can only be achieved through the use of sustainable alternative fuels. It demonstrated that this is no easy task, highlighting the issues faced in Europe to date in reducing the carbon intensity of fuels used for road transport.
To decarbonise aviation, new types of alternative fuels need to be brought forward. Our report focused on synthetic fuels, namely electrofuels (known as synthetic kerosene or power-to-liquid), which will be needed to close the gap. Electrofuels are produced through combining hydrogen with carbon from CO2. With the hydrogen produced using additional renewable electricity and with the correct source of CO2 (air capture), such fuels can be close to near zero emissions and carbon circular. Strict safeguards are needed to ensure synthetic kerosene would be produced only from zero emission electricity.
If produced at scale, electrofuels are likely to cost between three and six times more than untaxed jet fuel. At a cost of €2,100 per tonne electrofuel uptake will increase ticket prices by 59%, resulting in a 28% reduction in projected passenger demand compared to a business-as-usual scenario. However, compared to the ticket price of €150 per tonne the ticket price increase would only be 23%. The report found that introducing a progressively more stringent low carbon fuel standard (GHG target) on aviation fuel suppliers will leave all operators flying within or from Europe needing to purchase such fuels. These rising fuel costs will increase operating costs which will inevitably be passed onto consumers, causing a fall in demand for jet fuel compared to forecasts and reducing the volume of alternative fuels that will be required to replace kerosene.
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A further note of caution in the report was that while the use of such fuels can put aviation on a pathway to decarbonisation, getting to zero emissions, the generally accepted term for decarbonisation, will be difficult because producing alternative fuels which, on a life cycle basis, are 100% carbon free is very challenging. Advanced biofuels could play a role in substituting fossil fuel demand in aviation. However, strict sustainability safeguards are needed to ensure advanced biofuels offer genuine emission savings – these are not yet in place. If fuels with poor environmental and climate credentials would be excluded, the potential supply of advanced biofuels would be very limited. Our report finds that they could play a role – meeting up to 11% of the remaining 2050 fuel demand in our scenario – but alone won’t be available in the quantities needed. This is partly because non-transport sectors will also have a claim to biomass feedstocks, reducing availability.
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The report did not rule out the role that radical new aircraft designs could play in significantly reducing aviation emissions, for example hydrogen or electric aircraft. However such aircraft are not expected to be in operation in significant numbers until the 2040s, and will find it especially challenging to replace conventional aircraft for long-haul flights. What is less speculative is that significant liquid fuel demand will exist right through to 2050, and for that reason, the report focuses heavily on how such fuels can be decarbonised. Should hydrogen aircraft technology develop more rapidly this would not be at odds with significant investment in synthetic fuels as hydrogen is a key input for electrofuels.
Aside from decarbonising aviation fuels, the warming from aviation’s non-CO2 effects at altitude is considerable and is a challenge that is barely being touched. While the report discussed these effects and identified possible mitigation approaches, there remains a lack of policy focus and investment in scientific research on this topic. This failure to act means we are unable to propose a suite of mitigation measures nor estimate their effects. What is clear is that the European Commission must meet its obligations under the EU ETS Directive to foster further research and, resulting from that, come forward with proposals on measures by the start of 2020. Finally, the report does not recommend offsetting as this is a solution that is incompatible with the decarbonisation logic of the Paris Agreement. The report outlined what action should look like: aggressively cutting fuel demand, moderating the expected growth in air travel, decarbonising the remaining fuel, and addressing the sector’s non-CO2 effects.
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See full report at