Global efforts to reduce carbon emissions have got a shot in the arm with the aviation industry’s development agency recently agreeing to “CO2 Efficiency Standard” for commercial aircraft.
The CO2 Efficiency Standard, which has taken six years of “painstaking negotiation and technical work”, was approved by the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO)’s Committee on Aviation Environmental Protection.
The Montreal, Canada-headquartered ICAO is a specialised agency of the United Nations. It codifies the principles and techniques of international air navigation and fosters the planning and development of international air transport to ensure safe and orderly growth.
The standard, which will come into force in 2020, will ensure that CO2 emissions from new aircraft will have to meet a minimum baseline (defined as a maximum fuel burn per flight kilometre, which must not be exceeded).
From 2023 this will also apply to existing aircraft designs still in manufacture at that date.
Currently, aviation contributes around 2% of all human carbon dioxide emissions, around 700mn tonnes in 2014.
In this context, it is heartening to note that the International Air Transport Association (IATA), the trade association of the world’s airlines, has been pushing for a mandatory global carbon offset scheme as a key tool in achieving its carbon-neutral growth commitment from 2020.
Some results are already seen in terms of fuel efficiency, but certainly more needs to be done by the industry, if it is to achieve its immediate goal of improving the fuel efficiency across the fleet by an average of 1.5% a year until 2020.
“The agreement of this CO2 Standard is a vital and very welcome development. The CO2 Standard does not solve aviation’s climate challenge on its own, but it is an important element in our comprehensive strategy for tackling carbon emissions,” points out Tony Tyler, IATA director-general and CEO.
The next milestone will be the implementation of a market-based measure to address CO2 emissions, which IATA hopes to see agreed at the ICAO Assembly in September this year.
“Our shared industry goals are for carbon-neutral growth from 2020, and for a 50% cut in CO2 emissions by 2050. This CO2 standard is a significant milestone towards those targets, and proves that the industry and the world’s governments are working together to find a sustainable future for aviation,” Tyler said.
The September ICAO could make important decisions regarding global carbon offsetting to be implemented from 2020, but airlines are already driving down emissions.
While annual air travel growth is above 5%, emission increases are below 3% partly because of fuel efficiency improvements running at more than 2% a year, experts  say.
The industry’s target since 2009 has been to achieve a 1.5% improvement in fuel efficiency every year from 2010 to 2020, which it is reportedly exceeding.
A major contributor to this positive divergence of emission reduction from global air travel growth is the $1tn invested in the 9,000 aircraft that have entered service in the last seven years.
Those aircraft are, among others, the more fuel efficient, made by both the leading manufacturers- Boeing and Airbus.