ABSTRACT
This book provides an overview of the aviation industry in the context of carbon mitigation commensurate with the EU and UK’s commitment to making their fair contribution to avoiding ‘dangerous climate change’. The book synthesises science and policy to explain why the aviation sector has become the focus of academics, environmental campaigners and increasingly policymakers. If industrialised nations are to play their part in ensuring global mean temperatures do not exceed a 2ºC temperature rise above preindustrial levels, a sea change in policies and actions to both reduce energy consumption and decarbonise energy supply is essential. Key to achieving an absolute reduction in emissions in the short-to medium-term is to accept that the target must include all sectors of the economy, and then to find the most appropriate and effective method for reducing emissions for the economy as a whole. Incorporating the aviation industry within the EU’s Emissions Trading Scheme may go some way to address aviation’s impact, but as implementation and significant emission reduction across many sectors is unlikely for some time, alternative measures are required now to ensure CO2 emissions start to fall as a matter of urgency. Given that the aviation industry has significantly fewer technological and managerial options to reduce CO2 emissions in the short-to medium-term than do most other sectors, and that any improvements made will likely be outstripped by growth, two clear courses of action emerge:
Industrialised nations must urgently reduce energy consumption, improve energy efficiency and roll out low-carbon supply options across all sectors of the economy. Only a portfolio of all of these measures will deliver the scale of decarbonisation required.
