Scenario analysis of CO₂ emissions from China’s civil aviation industry through 2030

Highlights

• CO₂ emissions from China’s aviation transport would almost double from 2013 to 2030.

• Key impact factors include jet fuel substitute, fuel intensity and traffic demand.

• Air traffic demand has the most significant influence on the CO₂ emissions.

• Policy suggestions include carbon tax, enhanced R&D policy and carbon offset etc.

Abstract

China’s civil aviation industry has undergone a rapid expansion since the early 1980s, which has resulted in drastic increases in aviation fuel consumption and CO₂ emissions. The rapid increase in air transport is expected to continue, which poses critical challenges to this industry in terms of carbon emissions reduction. Despite its importance, an analysis of CO₂ emissions with the future development of this industry and the impacts of crucial factors is missing from the literature. To bridge this gap, this study conducts scenario analysis of CO₂ emissions from this sector through 2030 and assesses the influences from the key influential factors, including the adoption of low carbon jet fuel, the improvement of fuel intensity due to technological advancements of aircraft, and the increase of air traffic demand. The results show that the air traffic demand has the most significant influence on emissions. The technological improvements in fuel intensity and the adoption of biomass-based fuel appear unlikely to reach the ambitious targets for this industry without a disruptive technological breakthrough. A more comprehensive policy framework, including a carbon tax on jet fuel, R&D support to promote fuel efficiency and a carbon offset scheme etc., is proposed.

Introduction

Airplane flights around the world contributed 2–3% of the total anthropogenic CO₂ emissions in 2012, and this proportion will increase in the future [1]. In addition, aviation traffic is expected to double within 15 years of 2012, while fuel consumption and CO₂ emissions should double in 25 years [2]. China’s civil aviation sector ranks second in the world in terms of total traffic turnover, including both passengers and cargo, behind only the United States [3]. The total turnover of China’s civil aviation reached 67.2 billion ton-kilometers in 2013 and has increased at an average rate of 9.5% per annum over the last 5 years. Unavoidably, the consumption of aviation fuel consumption has also increased rapidly, which has resulted in considerable CO₂ emissions. The issue of reducing CO₂ emissions in China’s aviation industry is increasingly gaining attention, particularly after the dispute over the inclusion of the air transport sector in the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme (EUETS). Despite the heated debate in the industry, quantitative studies of CO₂ emissions in China’s aviation sector are scarce. In particular, the issues of CO₂ emissions with the future development of this industry and the impacts of crucial factors on the emissions have not been addressed.

According to our literature survey, many studies have investigated the issues of CO₂ emissions from the aviation sector at a worldwide or countrywide level. Some have focused on medium-term or long-term scenario analyses [4], [5], [6], while others have discussed policy instruments and regulations, such as the impact of the inclusion of the aviation industry in the EUETS on air transport [7], [8]. Although China has become the second largest country in terms of the volume of aviation transport, studies of the CO₂ emissions from China’s air transport sector are surprisingly rare. Loo and Li estimated CO₂ emissions from passenger transport in China between 1949 and 2009 [9]. Their calculations focused on passenger transport and excluded freight transport. They employed both distance-based and fuel-based methods to estimate the general trends of CO₂ emissions from four passenger transport modes and found that air transport has been the second largest contributor since 1998 after road transport. He estimated the CO₂ emissions from aircraft in China’s civil aviation sector between 1960 and 2009 using a fuel-based top-down method that included both passengers and freight [10]. The results showed that the total CO₂ emissions from aircraft in China increased from 0.12 Mt in 1960 to 41.44 Mt in 2009, while the emission intensity decreased from 2.9 kg per revenue ton-kilometer (RTK) to 0.96 kg per RTK over the same period. Fan et al. conducted an emissions inventory of several pollutants, including HC, CO, NOx, CO₂ and SO₂, during both the landing and take-off (LTO) and cruising stages within China’s aviation industry in 2010 [11]. Their method was also based on fuel consumption but disaggregated the data by airline and further by airplane type. In the 2010 inventory, the CO₂ emissions from China’s domestic flights amounted to 38.21 Mt [11]. Cai et al. studied the carbon emissions of China’s transport sector in 2007 at both the national and provincial levels [12]. They also employed an estimation method that was based on fuel consumption and estimated the CO₂ emissions of air transport in 2007 to be 22.4 Mt, which accounted for approximately 5% of China’s transport sector. All of these studies employed top-down methods that were based on fuel consumption due to the availability of data. However, their calculation boundaries and data sources were different, so their results varied somewhat.

In this context, this article constructs a series of scenarios to analyze the CO₂ emissions from the aviation industry through 2030 while considering key influential factors, including the adoption of different jet fuel types with different emissions characteristics, the improvement of fuel intensity of aircraft due to technological advancements, and the increase of air traffic demand, to provide support for policy-makers within China’s aviation industry.

This article is organized as follows. Section 2 estimates the historical CO₂ emissions from 1980 to 2013 to illustrate the increase since the implementation of the “reform and open-up” policy.¹ Section 3 explains the details of the method and the data collection, including the consideration of changes in fuel types within the fuel consumption structure, technological improvements of fuel efficient aircraft and the growth in China’s air traffic. Section 4 introduces the scenario settings and analyzes the calculation results. Section 5 provides policy recommendations and concludes.