Aviation is an important contributor to the global economy, satisfying society’s mobility needs. It contributes to climate change through CO 2 and non-CO 2 effects, including contrail-cirrus and ozone formation. There is currently significant interest in policies, regulations and research aiming to reduce aviation’s climate impact. Here we model the effect of these measures on global warming and perform a bottom-up analysis of potential technical improvements, challenging the assumptions of the targets for the sector with a number of scenarios up to 2100. We show that although the emissions targets for aviation are in line with the overall goals of the Paris Agreement, there is a high likelihood that the climate impact of aviation will not meet these goals. Our assessment includes feasible technological advancements and the availability of sustainable aviation fuels. This conclusion is robust for several COVID-19 recovery scenarios, including changes in travel behaviour. Aviation contributes to climate change and ways to reduce its emissions are widely debated. Here, the authors assess the effects of technology improvements and the use of sustainable aviation fuels and find that even when these are considered aviation is unlikely to meet emissions goals in line with the Paris Agreement.
【저자키워드】 Environmental impact, Climate change, Climate-change mitigation, Projection and prediction, 【초록키워드】 COVID-19, improvement, Research, Travel, target, agreement, Analysis, Regulation, Improvements, Paris, measure, emission, assumption, aviation, Effect, Effects, likelihood, robust, include, unlikely, changes in, contribute, reduce, feasible, aviation fuel, 【제목키워드】 COVID-19, Paris, Effect, Evaluating,