Addressing the impact of airport pricing, investment and operations on greenhouse gas emissions

Abstract

The discussion of mitigating climate change has turned towards airports, which are a key element in the overall air transport industry. The paper analyses how measures at the airport level can help to directly or indirectly reduce emissions from the air transport sector. This topic is of relevance because, by now, external costs of the sector are internalised only partially. We distinguish between non-aviation and aviation emissions as well as those from airport access and egress. In addition, airports are regarded as a node by policymakers to reduce emissions. While a reduction of non-aviation emissions is straightforward and also attempted by many airports, the reduction in aviation emissions is mainly controlled by the airlines themselves and airports only have an indirect effect. Applying microeconomics, we analyse how operational factors, pricing and slot regimes can affect output and emissions. In the short run, with busy airports, differentiated charges might only lead to reduced emissions in the US, as the slot systems ration demand well. In the long run new capacity must be assessed by Cost Benefit Analysis with pricing of local and global environmental externalities. While full internalisation of external costs is, in principle, possible it has yet to be achieved. This means that there is a significant task to assess the emissions at airport with a view to enabling stronger policies to reduce emissions.