Identifying carbon dioxide reducing aircraft technologies and estimating their impact on global CO2 emissions

Kurzfassung

Increasing CO2 emissions and associated fuel consumption of the world’s aircraft fleet are a serious threat for both the world climate and the profitability of commercial aviation. CO2 emission can be analyzed on the local – i.e. single aircraft – and global – i.e. world fleet – level. Methods to reduce CO2 on the former are identified and the consequent future evolution of global CO2 is estimated. A method is developed and applied to assess the future fleet built-up through 2036. New aircraft programs as well as phase-out of inservice aircraft are considered. Individual aircraft’s projected fuel efficiency and operational characteristics are introduced to assess the overall fleet’s CO2 emission development over the considered time frame. Three scenarios are assumed to show the effect of different rates of technology progress in terms of fleetwide aircraft fuel efficiency. Besides the individual aircraft‘s technological advances, further measures to reduce CO2 emissions on a fleet level are analyzed: Bio fuels, shorter aircraft program cycles and shorter aircraft life. It is shown that the sole aircraft-related technology improvements will not be sufficient to reach such goals as ‘carbon neutral growth’ due to a constantly high traffic growth rate. Bio fuels seem to be the only solution for this problem, however, this technology is still immature and thus subject of high uncertainty in terms of economic viability as well as net-carbon footprint.