Sustainable Aviation

Abstract

Sustainable Aviation is a unique alliance of the UK's airlines, airports, aerospace manufacturers and air navigation service providers. Together, we drive a long term strategy to deliver cleaner, quieter, smarter flying. SA is the first alliance of its type in the world, and reports regularly on progress in reducing aviation's environmental impact. Executive Summary This document sets out Sustainable Aviation's projection of future CO 2 emissions from UK aviation. Our projection is based on recently published UK-Government forecasts of aviation demand-growth, together with our own assumptions concerning the deployment of technology, sustainable fuels, operational measures and carbon trading. We conclude that UK aviation is able to accommodate significant growth to 2050 without a substantial increase in absolute CO 2 emissions. We also support the reduction of net CO 2 emissions to 50% of 2005 levels through internationally agreed carbon trading. Government will play a key role in supporting research and development in aerospace technology, encouraging the introduction of sustainable biofuels, delivering on infrastructure projects such as the Single European Sky initiative, and working with other countries to establish a global sectoral approach for regulating international aviation emissions based on carbon trading. We do not support unilateral UK targets and measures as they would be unnecessary and counter productive. Such measures would deliver no overall environmental benefit, but would result in carbon leakage, market distortion, and the loss of economic benefits to our international competitors. Recent and future developments in aircraft and engine technology will play a major role in reducing UK aviation's carbon intensity. We anticipate absolute CO 2 emissions will continue to fall post-2050 due to the ongoing penetration into the fleet of new wide-body aircraft types entering service from around 2035 onwards. The same technologies will also be deployed on a worldwide basis, with a correspondingly greater CO 2 mitigation impact. The potential for sustainable biofuels to reduce CO 2 emissions from UK aviation has increased dramatically over the past three years. During this period, two classes of sustainable fuel have been certified for commercial use, and there has been considerable diversification in the range of potential feedstocks and processing routes being developed. This area continues to develop rapidly. Improvements in air traffic management and operational procedures will also play a material role in reducing the carbon intensity of aviation in the coming decades. Although UK aviation currently accounts for some 5-6% of global aviation's CO 2 emissions, …