አቪዬሽን እና ዓለም መትረፍ-ዘላቂ ሚዛን ማግኘት

The Airlines For America, A4A, recently put out some slides, just recapitulating the fact that the airline industry was unique as an industry globally and coming together a long time ago in agreeing something called CORSIA, the Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation, CORSIA, which talks in terms of a carbon neutral growth in aviation, beginning in 2021. And the intention there is to reduce CO2 emissions by 50% by 2050, as compared with 2005 levels.

What does that mean? Well, in 2005, the airlines carried a total of 2.1 billion passengers. By 2019, passenger numbers had more than doubled to 4.6 billion and the growth dissipated very, very quickly in 2020, of course, so that today we’re actually back at 2005 levels in terms of passenger numbers. It’s a dramatic reduction obviously, and it’s not going to stay there, hopefully. But equally importantly, the level of emissions is much, much lower today, probably 30%, thanks to the greater efficiency of aircraft engines, and in some cases, operating procedures. So, we are getting somewhere, but once that growth starts rushing back, anything’s possible.

The positive is that aviation emissions will be well below 2019 levels, still for some years to come. Long-haul international, for example, is going to be very slow to return. The estimates are that probably, this year at a maximum, 50% of long-haul, that is wide-body operations, will return. And those operations in 2019, long haul wide body operations, accounted for about 40% of total emissions. By taking half of that out of the equation, we’re looking at just there alone, a 20% reduction in emissions, very significant amount.

Logically, what we’re talking about therefore, because of the reduced amounts of travel and of flying, on the one hand, the pressure to reduce emissions in the short term will be relaxed. Or alternatively, and this is quite possibly the case, pressure will grow to keep emissions at the same level as they are now, that is to reset the base for growth. I think the outcome is probably likely to be a bit of both of those, but with a lot of tension on the second level.

Bill Gates just recently published a book called How to Avoid a Climate Disaster. And he said a lot of sensible things. It’s not necessarily, in this argument, a good idea to have Bill Gates on your side, because he does get a lot of pushback from many, but he makes several relevant points in the aviation context, I think. First of all, there’s not enough money, time, or political will to reconfigure the energy sector in 10 years. So, trying to reach impossible goals, just doom the world to insufficient short-term gain. Also, carbon emissions, and this is important from our transport perspective, carbon emissions are not going to get to zero simply by people flying or driving less. What’s needed really, to change things significantly, is a holistic approach. It means zero carbon ways to produce electricity, to make things, to grow food, to keep our buildings cool or warm, and to move people and goods around the world.

Crucially, people need to change radically how they produce. And the worst climate offenders, and the things that need to change more, are steel, meat, and cement. Making steel and cement alone accounts for about 10% of all global emissions, and beef alone, for 4%. He didn’t mention, but might have, that fashion also accounts for somewhere around 10%. These are all areas which can change quite dramatically at a personal level, we can make things different. But he says, according to Bill Gates, the focus needs to be on the radical changes needed to transportation, buildings, industry, culture, and politics. There is no single breakthrough, he says, that can solve all those things.

From an aviation point particularly, Microsoft has set an example with Alaska Airlines, for example. Bill Gates says, offsets not by planting trees, which is becoming a bit of an unknown and perhaps losing a bit of its reputability but offset by buying sustainable aviation fuel. As he says, another example of using procurement to drive down green premiums involves the airline industry. Your company, and he’s talking about companies like Microsoft, can offset the emissions from employees’ travel by buying sustainable aviation fuel for the miles they fly. That creates demand for clean fuels, attracting more innovation in that area, and it makes travel related emissions a factor in your company’s business decisions. So, Microsoft and Alaska Airlines signed a deal like this for some of the routes they fly back in 2020, and that’s because Microsoft uses Alaska Airlines quite widely.

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