From Forbes, April 30:
As the airline industry gears itself up to decarbonize in order to meet climate change targets, there are some questions as to how it will get there and ultimately, who will pick up the tab for operational changes that need to be made—it is likely that some of this cost will be picked up by travelers in the form of much more expensive airfares.
One key ingredient to reducing the industry's carbon emissions is to change how a plane runs, notably by using sustainable aviation fuel. Willie Walsh, director general of the International Air Transport Association (IATA) told a Bloomberg conference panel this week that it wasn't yet clear who would pay the cost of developing this fuel.
Walsh told the audience that sustainable aviation fuel could help with up to a 65% reduction. However, Walsh envisages that the cost "will have to be borne by consumers, there’s just no way around it."
The industry rapidly needs to decarbonize to meet the current targets of keeping the global temperature rise under control. The World Travel & Tourism Council reports that the travel industry generates between 8% to 11% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions—much of which comes from transport and a lot of that, from aviation. The airline industry itself is under intense pressure to meet an immense target of net zero emissions by 2050.
There are several other ways that the airline industry can reduce emissions—reduction in the number of flights and better route organization are two. In addition, the speed of an aircraft can radically reduce emissions and pilots across lots of airlines are being asked to slow down to save money (which also helps meet targets).
The International Council on Clean Transportation predicts that it might cost as much as $1 trillion for decarbonizing the industry and that ticket prices will have to rise as much as 22% by 2050 to foot the bill....
....MUCH MORE
If interested see also April 30's "Bananas, Kumquats, and Today’s Inflation Problem".
