Will technological progress be sufcient to stabilize CO

2
emissions from
air transport in the mid-term?
Benot Chze
a,b,e,
, Julien Chevallier
b,c
, Pascal Gastineau
b,d
a
IFP Energies Nouvelles, 1-4 avenue de Bois-Prau, 92852 Rueil-Malmaison, France
b
EconomiX-CNRS, University of Paris Ouest, France
c
Universit Paris 8 (LED), France
d
IFSTTAR, LTE, 69675 Bron, France
e
Climate Economics Chair, Paris, France
a r t i c l e i n f o
Keywords:
Air transport
CO
2
emissions
Emissions forecasting
Climate change
a b s t r a c t
This article investigates whether anticipated technological progress can be expected to off-
set the CO
2
emissions resulting from rapid air trafc growth. Global aviation CO
2
emissions
projections are examined for eight geographical zones until 2025. Air trafc ows are fore-
cast using a dynamic panel-data econometric model, and then converted into correspond-
ing quantities of air trafc CO
2
emissions using specic hypotheses and energy factors.
None of our nine scenarios appears compatible with the objective of 450 ppm CO
2
-eq. rec-
ommended by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Nor is any compatible with
the Panels aim of limiting global warming to 3.2 C.
2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction
Emissions of CO
2
emissions from air transport rose from 2% in 1980 to 2.52.7% in 2007, with a subsequent slowing done
in the rate of increase, largely because of the more rapid rise in emissions in other sectors. In addition to an absolute rise of
CO
2
emissions associated with aviation, it is also responsible for other climate change gases such as H
2
O and NO
x
. These
trends have led to increasing interest in developing policies to contain these emissions.
In this paper, we consider the implications of alternative approaches to policy; the stimulation of the adoption of clea-
ner technologies regulation of the demand for air transportation services. Here we examine the respective merits of these
options.
2. World and regional air trafc CO
2
emissions projections
CO
2
emissions from aircraft is almost directly related to the fuel they consume to forecast aviation jet fuel consumption,
we make use of Chze et al. (2011a) and divide the global market into eight regions: Central and North America, Latin Amer-
ica, Europe, Russia and Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), Africa, the Middle East, Asian countries and Oceania (ex-
cept China). China is taken as a special case and treated separately. The drivers for aviation growth are seen as trends in
economic activity, basically gross domestic product (GDP), energy efciency from technical change, as well as exogenous
shocks.
A number of scenarios regarding future air trafc levels are based on different predictions of the drivers (Fig. 1). Our base-
line forecast scenario, IMF GDP growth rates, relies on International Monetary Fund (IMF) GDP growth rates to 2014, and
1361-9209/$ - see front matter 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.trd.2012.08.008

Corresponding author at: IFP Energies Nouvelles, 1-4 avenue de Bois-Prau, 92852 Rueil-Malmaison, France.
E-mail address: benoit.cheze@ifpen.fr (B. Chze).
Transportation Research Part D 18 (2013) 9196
Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect
Transportation Research Part D
j our nal homepage: www. el sevi er. com/ l ocat e/ t rd
indicates that world air trafc will increase annually at 4.7%/year between 2008 and 2025, increasing from 637.4
to1391.8 billion revenue tonne-kilometres (rkt). At the regional level, average annual rkt growths range from 3% in Central
and North America to 8.2% in China (Table 1).
The trafc forecasts are converted into corresponding CO
2
projections using the Trafc Efciency Method developed by
the UK Department of Trade and Industry for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (1999). The approach is based
Fig. 1. The air trafc CO
2
emissions projection scenarios.
Table 1
Air trafc and corresponding CO
2
emissions projections for 2008 and 2025 Benchmark scenario.
Notes: Figures in parenthesis represent yearly mean growth rate of air trafc forecasts between 2008 and 2025.
92 B. Chze et al. / Transportation Research Part D 18 (2013) 9196
on the idea that the demand for jet fuel while rising with economic growth is tempered by increasing fuel efciency of air-
crafts. The latter comes about because of improved air trafc management (ATM), up grading of existing aircrafts, including
new engines, and the introduction of more efcient aircrafts. Airlines may also achieve higher load factors, although these
are already at over 80% in some major markets.
The conversion of trafc models in fuel consumption models in the case of the Trafc efciency improvement scenario
relies on assumptions concerning the evolution of weight-load factors and energy efciency coefcients; the former only
having a marginal effect. To determine energy efciencies and their expected growth rates; we follow Chze et al.
(2011b) and compare the evolution of each regional eets jet fuel consumption using International Energy Agency and Inter-
national Civil Aviation Organization data to compute directly the energy efciency coefcients of the regional eets and their
corresponding energy efciency gains.
In summary, this generates the three scenarios with the following features:
Heterogeneous energy gains: this reects the heterogeneity of energy consumptions among regions in the past, and
globally, denes future energy trends in each region based on the experiences from 1996 to 2008.
Low energy gains: based on the heterogeneous energy gains scenario, energy costs are assumed to fall by 10%.
High energy gains: based on the heterogeneous energy gains scenario, energy costs are assumed to increase by 10%.
Our benchmark scenario anticipates a strong growth of CO
2
emissions coming from air transport, even if it involves opti-
mistic assumptions of energy efciency improvements for the aircraft eet. It also involves considerable changes in the lev-
els of CO
2
emissions between regions from 2008 to 2025. Table 1 shows that the average annual growth of air trafc will
largely be in Asia (6.9%) and China (8.2%) with these regions becoming increasingly important generators of CO
2
; accounting
for a third of emissions from air transport by 2025. North America and Europe would still be the main emitters of GHG, but
their share would fall below 50%. The policy challenge is that it is nancially more costly to reduce GHG emissions in emerg-
ing countries with high growth than in developed countries (Quinet, 2009).
To evaluate the robustness of these results, we run sensitivity tests. For the benchmark scenario, we focus on the eco-
nomic growth assumptions and those regarding energy efciency improvements of the aircraft eet.
Fig. 2a shows the sensitivity of results of four scenarios to assumptions regarding energy efciency improvements. CO
2
forecasts of emissions at the global level, as expected, decreases of (light dashed curve) or increases (dark dashed curve) by
10% when we change the energy efciency scenario regarding the regional aircraft eets compared to the benchmark case. In
the case of the higher efciency scenario, CO
2
emissions fall by 4.2% by 2025 over the base case, and rise by 4.0 in the less
efcient scenarios. Fig. 2b shows the sensitivity of these results to assumptions regarding future GDP trends; CO
2
emissions
lower by 8.8% compared with the base case or increased by 9.8% as our GDP inputs are varied by 10% compared to the bench-
mark case. Comparing over the nine scenarios, air transport generated CO
2
emissions should rise between 22% and 57% glob-
ally over the period.
Thus, none of the scenarios suggests a decrease, or even stabilization, of the level of CO
2
emissions by 2025 (Table 3). This
result is obtained despite the introduction of relatively strong positive hypotheses regarding energy efciency gains in the air
transport sector.
Fig. 2. Sensitivity analysis of aviation CO
2
emissions projections.
B. Chze et al. / Transportation Research Part D 18 (2013) 9196 93
We now turn to the hypothetical case where the increase in the energy efciency of the aircraft eet would be stabilized
at its current levels of 700 Mt by 2025. The results of this scenario are shown in Table 2. To stabilize CO
2
emissions without
constraining the demand for air transport, the results suggest that energy efciency would need to be improved on average
by 4.0% per year; about twice the level of the benchmark scenario. As a point of comparison, Fig. 3 summarizes the growth
rates of CO
2
emissions coming from air transport found in previous studies. These latter show that CO
2
emissions could rise
from between 0.8% and 4.0% a year over the next decade. The main differences between these forecasts are due to their
underlying assumptions regarding economic growth rates, energy efciency improvements, etc., and the geographical cov-
erage. Our benchmark forecasts of CO
2
emissions from air transport fall in the lower range compared to these previous
estimates.
Table 2
Air trafc and CO
2
emissions forecasts for 2008 to 2025 when the increase in the energy efciency of the aircraft eet stabilizes CO
2
emissions by 2025.
Fig. 3. Comparison of results from global aviation emissions studies, 19952030, Mt CO
2
. (See above-mentioned references for further information.)
94 B. Chze et al. / Transportation Research Part D 18 (2013) 9196
To limit global warming to 2 C above pre-industrial levels, Nakicenovic and Swart (2000) have considered several sce-
narios based on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (2007a,b) for the period to 2100. These SRES scenarios rely
on assumptions regarding world economic and population growth, the growth of developing countries, environmental qual-
ity and technology diffusion so that the maximum concentration of GHG in the atmosphere should not exceed 450 ppm that
would limit the increase in temperatures to 2 C. This would stabilize world emissions by 2020/2025, and reduce them by a
factor of two by 2050 under the Type I scenario. Quinet (2009), when reviewing these results focuses on the pessimistic
scenarios, Types V and VI, and argues that global warming may be as high as +6.1 C above the 1900 level by 2100.
Table 3 compares our CO
2
emissions forecasts of air transport emissions with the global CO
2
emissions under the IPCC
Type V and VI scenarios up to 2025. For global warming to stay within the limit of 22.4 C in 2100 emissions should not
exceed 29,000Mt in 2025, implying their stabilization between 2008 and 2025. For global warming to stay within 2.8
3.2 C in 2100, CO
2
emissions would have to be under 34,500 Mt in 2025, allowing an increase in global CO
2
of 19% between
2008 and 2025. For global warming to stay between 3.2 and 4 C by 2100 (SRES Type III), CO
2
emissions need to be less than
39,500 Mt in 2025, allowing CO
2
emissions to increase by 36%.
Compared to our benchmark scenario, CO
2
emissions from air transport should rise from 724 Mt in 2008 to 1000 Mt by
2025; a rise of 38%. We can compare this with the SRES forecasts by calculating the share of CO
2
emissions from the air trans-
port sector in overall global emissions. The tables shows that to limit global warming to +2 C in 2100 the Type I SRES sce-
narios aviation CO
2
emissions under our benchmark scenario would represent 3.4% of world emissions in 2025; an increase
of 38% over 2008. This growth in emissions from aviation, however, is not compatible with the objective of 450 ppm (Type I
SRES scenario) recommended by the IPCC, and nor is it compatible with the objective of limiting global warming to +3.2 C in
2100, the Type III SRES scenario. Indeed, the share of emissions from aviation should go from 2.5% in 2008 to 2.9% in 2025.
The forecasts from our benchmark scenario are only compatible with an increase of temperatures between +3.2 and +4 C if
world emissions remain on the same growth path. The share of air transport emissions would effectively remain constant
between 2008 and 2025 with a percentage of variation of 1%. Essentially, none of our scenarios of CO
2
emissions are com-
Table 3
Comparison of the studys CO
2
forecasts with those provided by IPCC.
B. Chze et al. / Transportation Research Part D 18 (2013) 9196 95
patible with the objective of limiting global warming to +3.2 C (the Types I to III SRES scenarios) with the exception of the
one in Table 2 we have specically created to do this.
Acknowledgments
The authors are grateful to the lunch-seminars participants of the Economics Department of IFP Energies Nouvelles, and
for the helpful comments of L. Meunier, E.Bertout, P. Coussy,P. Marion, A. Pierru, J. Sabathier, V. Saint-Antonin, S. Tchung-
Ming and S. Vinot. We are indebted to the Editor-in-Chief, Kenneth Button, for his great deal of comments and remarks,
and for masterly guiding us in preparing the current version of the published article. The usual disclaimers applies.
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