Towards a Refined and Open Model for Calculating Flight Specific Greenhouse Gas Emissions

Abstract

There are many tools available for calculating greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from aviation. However, not all of them are transparent about their methodological choices and not all of them are relevant for certain purposes (e.g., comparison between different flights with the same origin-destination). In this paper, we propose an improved and open protocol (The Treep protocol), based on the improvement of existing protocols (principally myclimate protocol). In The Treep method, we replace the generic parameters in myclimate formula with aircraft or flight specific parameters and rely on more recent recommendations for the consideration of non-CO2 effects. The results show the relevance of greater granularity in GHG emissions calculations, and the variability of these results depending on the flight and the aircraft, among others.