Airbus and Climate Change
qchenevier.github.io
qchenevier.github.io
It's depressing that this is surprising, and even more depressing that it gives him optimism about the behavior of Airbus as a whole. The behavior of corporations doesn't reflect the morality of the people in them. The myth that it does is consistently used to argue against the necessity of regulations and enforcement. "Hey, look at all these people working in the ____ industry, they aren't evil. Bad behavior is the exception, a rare perfect storm when a handful of morally bankrupt individuals randomly converge." No, indifference to good and evil is the rule, regardless of the morality of the individuals involved. Destructive strategies that result in profit will be pursued to the hilt, and individuals inside a corporation are helpless to prevent this without laws and aggressive enforcement to support them.
I live in the U.S., which has many big automobiles transporting just one person. They are a much bigger emitter of carbon per person per unit of distance traveled. I don’t see why we should be discouraging commercial air travel while allowing individual automobiles to emit so much.
Those of you who are against air travel for climate reasons, can you share a source that has convinced you that it is a real problem?
https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector
That's why putting a price on emissions helps.
You are looking at those pie charts graphs by sector/application and indeed it looks fragmented.
However once you look at each sector the biggest contributors can be lumped:
1. Energy generation from Coal/Gas
2. Road transport with ICEs.
However my gut feeling is that Oil&Gas refinery and extraction are grossly under reporting Methane emissions. So it could be that the chart doesn't show the full picture of GHG.
There's been a fair amount of focus on this in the past ~5 years. We can constrain methane emissions both from a "bottoms-up" (measuring direct-from-source emissions or tallying up expected emissions given natural gas production and leakage rates) and "top-down" (measuring atmospheric CH4 over time and constraining the year-to-year emissions required to drive observed changes). Work like Rutherford et al (2021; https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-25017-4) definitely leave room for some unaccounted leakages arising from O&NG production, but there likely is not room for much more "grossly under reported" emissions.
https://phys.org/news/2022-10-nasa-tool-super-emitters-metha...
1. As others have said: Many things contribute some non-trivial percentage to climate change. And anything that is above 1% on a global scale is non-trivial.
2. Personal carbon budgets are very quickly exhausted by flying
3. You have to start somewhere to avoid emissions. Some things are harder to avoid than others. I am convinced that 99% of flights are not needed to maintain a good standard of living. It is a low-hanging fruit that we need to pick. The same thing applies to cruise ships.
The planes fly anyway; business travelers make them worthwhile even if they are mostly empty. Your 100kg does not make an appreciable difference, and no significant percentage will stop flying even if most vacationers abstain. See in particular the flights that flew completely empty during early COVID so the airlines could keep their precious airport terminal allocations.
I also couldn't believe when I found out a Learjet 7 seater might get 4MPG while an average US-sized SUV pulls about 12mpg. I thought it would be an order-of-magnitude or two different, not a factor of 3. Trucks are even closer. Americans drive trucks that never go off road or haul or tow.
And I think industry is far worse than individuals about emissions.
Overall, would I say planes are good for the world? No, not really. But I don't think they're anywhere near the first or most valuable place to focus efforts on
-planes travel a lot of miles very quickly. MPG is a fine number, but we should also look at something like total emissions per year of average use.
-planes emit around 3% of the global carbon total but serve only around 15% of the global population, unlike most industries.
I'm not going to stop flying anytime soon, but let's not kid ourselves about the impact our collective lifestyle has on the rest of the world.
Also worth mentioning that measures like carbon taxes, while having many problems, neatly solve what to optimize for when fighting carbon emission. Scale is automatically baked in.
> His [Dr Joeri Rogelj] calculations suggest aviation emissions between 2015 to 2050 will consume 27% of the remaining carbon budget to have a decent chance of keeping global temperature rise below 1.5C above preindustrial levels.
https://www.carbonbrief.org/aviation-consume-quarter-carbon-...
No, because it is obvious that flying less is better for the planet. Replace “flying” with “eating meat”, “driving”, etc.
The problem is that all the research in the world won’t get people to change their behavior. The incentives are too strong (it’s fun to go on vacation, meat tastes good, I can make money by selling cars) and the disincentives are too weak (some fish I’ve never seen goes extinct, 50 years from now Miami will be fucked, some people halfway around the world will die, etc.).
Amongst users of air travel, it is a significant source of emissions. A single round-trip across an ocean is on the same magnitude as driving emissions for the average american.
The hypocrisy is obvious. Morality and personal responsibility are a terrible foundation for environmentalism.
Also electric cars are coming but electric passenger and cargo planes are very far away or even impossible due to the physics of battery power density.
I think what's very far away is autonomous flight. But IMO farther is autonomous automobiles, because as both pilot and driver, aviation has rules, standards, predictability, integration of a wide assortment of vehicles of flight, training, and thus a far better prepared environment for autonomous. The automobile environment is so haphazard humans make way more mistakes driving than flying.
https://www.flightglobal.com/airframers/what-would-it-take-t...
Goong abroad and learning about people, cultures, and yourself is a difficult thing to quantify but it absolutely pays dividends later in life.
I think some regulations are great, like the prohibition against short haul flights in France that the article mentions. But I think overall efforts to reduce global warming should be targeted in ways that give the "biggest bang for the buck", and aviation-specific changes ain't it.
Only if we assume that we need to maintain or increase the level of air travel. The number of air travel passengers in 2019 (before the pandemic) was around 3.5X as many as it was in the early 1990s. That wasn't that long ago, and people managed just fine with fewer vacations abroad etc. It's easy to look at what we do today and take for granted that it's whats normal and no change is possible, but we consume the resources of 1.8 earths, so clearly we're living above our means. And since millions of people are currently on their way out of poverty and towards the same lifestyle as we as westerners are enjoying, this overconsumption of the planet's resources will get worse if nothing changes.
https://www.icao.int/Newsroom/Pages/2021-global-air-passenge...
Do you mean just those rich enough to use private jets?
This video series explains the issues well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k50qD40p3WU&list=PL_AaC0duf8...
On the long tun though, we have to reach net zero. And if possible even go into negative carbon emissions. 2% isn't much but there are probably activities much more critical than flying which we could use our carbon offset capabilities.
My biggest concern with aviation today are people flying private. It is symbolic but I don't think we will be able to ask people to sacrifice some of their comfort if the wealthiest people are not in the same boat.
Do you have an idea of how many giga tonnes of CO2/year we're talking about here?
What matters is how much it represents in relation with our total emissions (2%) or with other activities we also have to tackle to decide where to put our efforts first. (Or all at once whenever possible)
Therefore, I maintain what I say. 2% of the pie doesn't represent that much if we want to achieve net zero. But at some point we will have to tackle it.
the short answer is "1"
There’s an argument I haven’t evaluated myself that even if the fuel was carbon neutral, high altitude combustion might have a residual forcing.
I think transoceanic travel is critical to human flourishing, so I definitely hope we can minimize that residual.
How fortunate that nobody is actually suggesting that.
(Though I did charter a private jet two years ago for a business need. I took a small team to a place without regularly scheduled service. It is not clear to me if it was a net win or loss for carbon emissions given the other routes available.)
While I personally choose to live in a walkable downtown for many reasons, including climate impact, I end up having to travel in an automobile often. I think the taxes for this are misaligned to the impact.
Personally, I am a proponent of global travel. I think more travel means fewer wars and more benefits for humanity.
Personally I don't think global travel does much if anything for peace. Most wars are between neighboring countries and are started by leaders that have other reasons than not having visited the other country for doing so. Although travel isn't the issue, fossil fuel is, so instead of framing it as travel is good or bad, it should be about where the energy is coming from. And just like with economy, if you have a certain (carbon) budget, you can't spend more if you already spent all of it.
[0] https://www.icao.int/Newsroom/Pages/2021-global-air-passenge...
Amusingly, while this is likely true for many people with the same wealth, it is not true for me. My mother was a pilot and I have no children.
My reasoning on travel being good for peace has little to do with leaders.
In my opinion, simply comparing the averages is also not useful. I expect that car occupancy will be higher for distances where flying becomes reasonable, reducing the average emission levels. For example vacation travel most often happens in a group not alone. I also think that the economic benefit of car emissions is higher than plane emissions.
Emissions of air travel are commonly often given as CO2 Emissions (around 2% of emissions worldwide), while the complete warming effects are likely around 4% of warming worldwide [2].
Air travel is very unevenly distributed, with most of the population never flying as opposed to e.g. cars (in germany 2/3 of people fly less than once per year with half of them never flying [3], 12% of adults in the US account for 68% for flights takes [5]. In general look at [6] figure 4). Thus a small portion of the population benefits from air travel as opposed to e.g. car travel.
The increase in flying for developed countries and the further economic growth in developing countries means that without any intervention flying is expected to increase a lot in the next decades and threathen the paris goal.
It's very unlikely that air travel can meaningfully decarbonise in the next decades as opposed to car travel where a broad adoption of electric vehicles is expected in the next decade. The adoption of SAF has been pretty much non-existent up 'till now, contrary to industry promises (and fraught with issues both financial and energy usage) and battery-based solutions are only an option for ultra-short distance flights. Hydrogen based solutions are also very much in the early development phase and IMHO also unlikely to succeed.
Long-distance air travel is also without real alternative and can't be rolled back. For example, as air travel gets adopted more broadly, more people live in other countries a longer distance away and regularly visit their families at home. Trying to revert this is basically impossible (people can't see friends and family anymore), so higher adoption is hard to revert. If the population broadly becomes used to international vacations, reducing them in a large way also becomes unpopular. This is continually increases, so social solutions continually get harder.
Thus we expect to increase flights (but still with uneven distribution), have little hope for technical solutions for eliminating emissions in the next decades and social solutions will get harder as time goes on.
[1]: https://ourworldindata.org/travel-carbon-footprint [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_effects_of_aviat... [3]: https://www.eurocontrol.int/sites/default/files/2021-02/euro... [4]: http://www.mobilitaet-in-deutschland.de/pdf/MiD2017_Tabellen... page 74 [5]: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S095937802... [6]: https://theicct.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/global-aviati...
To evaluate your individual CO2 emissions, you can use this simulator: https://nosgestesclimat.fr
> Why do I have the same goal as an Indian or Nepalese person?
I do not understand, why not ?
Those country comparisons are totally idiotic because they produce the wrong fears. Example: look at that table https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di... , Switzerland is 4.8 tons and a third of the US. I like the US but Switzerland is another scale for quality of life on most metrics.
Air travel is one of the few things that’s hard to fix, but for example I can’t understand why everyone won’t buy an EV, that’s basically 99% the same as an ICE car and even better in many aspects. Probably less meat, that will make food cheaper and people will live longer. Else all pretty much the same. Hell, nothing can beat renewables at the moment. They are 4-5x cheaper than fossil fuels. So we’ll be richer with renewables, well save trillions in insurance and I have no clue how people can still thing fossil fuels are the way. Inform yourselves and start to think about the near future, not the past. Stop being a passive fossil fuel lobby repeater.
So basically, the “China is just dis-industrializing Europe, by convincing us to self-sabotage our industries” argument.
Last point, I’ve never seen scientific studies used in politics that were not massively forged.
1. Fear of meritocracy 2. Fear of countries not negotiating an equalitarian deal 3. Fear of the awful science of “that camp” (and I know exactly what 3 arguments you’ll oppose, so, don’t bother with the direct answer, please assume everything you want to answer is already understood and incorrect, and go straight to a second level of answers).
I know the current problems around manufacturing a little bit. My reading is that, yes, we can’t get out of fossil immediately, but I think we mostly failed to prepare and the current situation shows us that renewables are significant more resilient than detractors rate them.
Also I think producing cheaper products by running on coal is a thing of the past. What happens though is that bureaucracy and pay is clearly lower in some countries. Every country has to build a strategy based on those facts. In Europe I’ve seen too many countries comfortable with the past results and thus failed to plan for the future. Then blamed it on other countries because it’s an easy target for deflecting failures as always.
> why not ?
How do you incentive people to work if, in the end, everyone can consume and therefore emit exactly as much?
What’s the goal of studying hard if I’m not getting more consumption rights; Why wouldn’t we all coast school, since we’ll all get the same results; How would the society get any work done if no-one is incentived to work hard (That’s the neat part: You don’t, and you’re all poor as peons); Isn’t it always the same communist dream entering the main door after being kicked out for criminal activity by the back door for being at minimum the least efficient way to organize a society; If you’re going to react to the communist trope as being “not so bad”, doesn’t it confirm that it was what you intended all along.
Why would my consumption rights be exactly 1/8-billionth of the Earth capacity, independently on my work?
- A lot of people are not working to consume more, and it does not prevent them to work hard. They just aren't fulfilling themselves through consumerism. - A lot of people are working harder than you, for less. Should we take parts of your share a give it to them ? Spoiler alert, you will be constrained below 2T of CO2 emission, that's for sure, because you are not working harder than others. - In a finite world, emitting more than your share means stepping on somebody else's share. But why would have that privilege if you are not working more? - In a finite world, stepping on someone else's share that you are not permitted to take leads to a conflict. Conflict means war in a planetary context.
If I may suggest, if what's blocking you from emitting less, is your desire to consume more, you should try to change that, as your consumption capability will reduce in the future, whether you want it or not. This is because our energy sources are becoming less abundant, which means less consumption capability for the same amount of work.
> 1. Fear of meritocracy 2. Fear of countries not negotiating an equalitarian deal 3. Fear of the awful science of “that camp” (and I know exactly what 3 arguments you’ll oppose, so, don’t bother with the direct answer, please assume everything you want to answer is already understood and incorrect, and go straight to a second level of answers).
1. Meritocracy is a way to make you feel better for having more than others. In a finite world, having more than other means stealing from them. Nobody merits more than somebody else. At least not at the scale it is happening now. And don't assume that you work more than others.
2. I don't understand what you mean.
3. What is "that camp" ? What scientific studies are you talking about ?
Emissions taxes are the fairest way to balance consumption. That works even for the privileged who consume without hard work.
Also consider that those who advocate against excessive air travel also argue for the use of public transportation, walking and bicycling as a means to replace car travel. For long distance travel, the alternatives aren’t so obvious, that’s why aviation is such a concern.
Please don't be with a limited imagination.
Hydrogen is very-very different and needs complete redesign of the plane.
Hydrogen availability is pretty good, I mean most of the availability is not much better in CO2 emissions but with the time it would take Airbus to get the plane into commercial service getting the supply chain there would be pretty easy.
I still don't buy your argument that poor airbus has nothing it can do. If it wants to stay relevant in the 20-40 year horizon it needs to go at these hard problems now. If it doesn't then it has made a decision and might die, so what?
It has taken, what, two decades and counting to even get unleaded avgas approved, let alone banning the leaded version? Why would a more complex change be a feasible one-company effort?
But someone has to propose a solution.
I still stand by my view that the supply chain of hydrogen is solvable with current tech. Whereas hydrogen (or other green long range) planes are not. It does not make much sense for supply chain companies to go first if they know that it takes airbus or Boeing or whoever 20 years with 50% odds of success.
Something will happen in the world, like Bolsonaro losing his election and Lula making some promises, and I will gain hope. Then I'll look at the IPCC again and feel depressed. Then I'll make some commitment to change my life habits in some way that's a bit greener and accept that I can't do much more.
But there's still some cognitive dissonance when I reach acceptance. I don't really accept it deep down. I live in fear, especially fear for my kids' generation.
I often wonder about refugee camps and wonder how I'd fare in one of them. Is it possible to organise theater courses? How difficult is it to find a space to meditate? Would people still care to have intellectual discussions?
A difficult life is still one worth living.
I hope you’re trolling.
There‘s a big difference between perhaps not doing holidays in a place far away or even not buying a smart TV or new phone and what you describe.
But what would be even worse is trying to avoid the decline of easy energy. Because even if there's petrol and coal and gas left in the ground, we should stop burning it, because we have to mitigate climate change. That's the tragedy.
We're faced with a choice: maximizing short-term comfort by putting back the consequences of reducing available energy, or minimizing long-term discomfort (might be a euphemism) by deliberately cutting down on still available energy.
> Now I believe
Exactly. You believe. Old age has very little to do with energy and far more with knowledge and progress in medicine.
Aviation in particular will be carbon neutral either through synthetic hydrocarbon fuel (Prometheus Terraform), new hydrogen engines, or a network of shorter hop flights with battery powered aircraft (Eviation). In fact it may turn out to be one of the easier industries convert to carbon neutral. If you're really worried, you can work on one of these. If you don't have the skills or the time there's always politics, since you approaches like this will face regulatory and political hurdles that are at least as big as the technical hurdles.
If we divide, let's say, by 10 the emissions, we are still emitting too much.
The only solution is too eliminate completely the use of fossil fuels. For flying this means zero emissions planes (electric, hydrogen, ...) and/or synthetic fuels.
Synthetic fuels is probably the fastest path to net zero emissions: no need of new technology, no need even to build new airplanes.
Synthetic fuels is quite easy, if electricity is cheap enough synthetic kerosene will be cheaper than classic kerosene. Luckily, thanks to renewables, electricity is becoming exponentially cheaper.
Several companies are on the path of producing synthetic fuels cheaper than fossil ones. One example in mind: terraform industries in Pasadena.
And I truly hope they will be smart enough to transition or to to help in the energetic transition because if they don’t, they’ll die. And it would be a shame when you are employing so much good engineers.
But I’m not sure they will.
"Everything is intertwingled"
google it.
The point being that everything is connected, meaning: (In my view) trying to argue distinct components in some massively connected universe may not be all that helpful.
It's true that reductionism gets us some grand theories, but, what are the ways we could structure vastly more holistic conversations on these matters?
Going a long distance by car is about 4x better than flying, but if you drive 4x as far you have emitted more than on that flight.
The parent comment "No it isn‘t. The single most impactful one would be to not have kids." is also again turning things into a binary problem, there is no single solution, artificial CO2 sinks are not a single solution at all, we should not skip emissions because they represent less than 2% of global emissions for the same reason
Don't fall for the FUD, it's like EVs/FuelCell [2]
[1] - https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/27/airbus-sets-up-uk-facility-t...
Producing as many as we possibly can right now is a step in the wrong direction.
Why is it a step in the wrong direction?
We might even arrive at novel regulatory technology involving carbon provenance. We shall see.
Coming out of the chaos of Brexit and Covid and now with Ukraine, I am not surprised. Seems to be the mood in most large corps in the EU.