Aviation Carbon Footprint Global Scheduled Domestic Passenger Flights - 2012
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Aviation Carbon Footprint Global Scheduled Domestic Passenger Flights - 2012 This report provides a detailed breakdown of CO2 emissions from global scheduled domestic passenger aircraft operations in 2012. The carbon footprint of the operations is disaggregated at the country, airport and airline level. The document also provides a breakdown of the carbon costs and revenues associated with Dave Southgate scheduled domestic passenger operations. Comparisons are made with the carbon footprint of scheduled global international flights to provide a August 2013 picture of the total carbon footprint for global scheduled passenger aviation in 2012. 1 FOREWORD This is the third book in a trilogy I have published over the past year on the carbon footprinting of aviation. This book, which is focused on global domestic aviation, builds on the earlier work to complete a picture of the carbon footprint of global scheduled passenger flights in 2012. In order to facilitate cross comparison between the books I have tried as far as possible in this document to retain the style and feel of the earlier books by applying the same data analysis approaches and by presenting the information using similar visualisations. In common with the second book in the trilogy, the coverage of this book is constrained by data availability and it therefore relates solely to global scheduled domestic passenger operations. It is estimated that this captures about 85% of the total carbon footprint for global domestic aircraft operations. While this document is focused on global domestic aviation, throughout the text the domestic carbon footprint is compared to the international footprint and the two sectors are combined in many places to provide a picture of aviation’s total carbon footprint. Conventionally, domestic and international aviation footprints are examined separately for jurisdictional reasons – providing an insight on the total footprint gives a useful industry wide perspective. In common with the earlier books, this document does not suggest policy options for managing aviation’s carbon footprint but rather is intended as a data resource to assist deliberations on options for addressing the issue. One of my key aims in writing the books has been to stimulate thought and discussion on ways in which simple carbon footprinting techniques can be used track and transparently report global aviation’s evolving carbon footprint. The information in the document has been generated from a publicly available dataset of global scheduled passenger services in 2012. The data analysis and report generation has been carried out using widely available software applications. Dave Southgate Canberra August 2013 ©dgsouthgate 2013 Any material in this document may be freely reproduced and distributed without acknowledgement. 2 CONTENTS CHAPTER 1 CONTEXT OBSERVATIONS INTRODUCTION Page 4 Page 9 CHAPTER 2 CHAPTER 3 COUNTRIES Page 3 AIRPORTS Page 3 Page 13 Page 39 CHAPTER 4 CHAPTER 5 AIRLINES MONEY Page 52 Page 62 CHAPTER 6 COMPUTATION & VALIDATION FOOTPRINT PROFILES Page 67 Page 81 77 Author Page 196 [These are live tiles – click a tile to navigate to the desired location] 3 CONTENTS: Observations Introduction Countries Airports Airlines Money Validation Profiles Author Observations/Thoughts on Carbon Footprinting I have now published three books (including this one) which together provide a picture of the total carbon footprint of global scheduled passenger flights for 20121,2 – I will refer to this as my carbon footprinting trilogy throughout this document. Having got to this point I have included this short chapter to put forward some personal thoughts on the carbon footprinting exercise I have undertaken; in particular I am interested in how ‘simple’ carbon footprinting can be expanded and how it can find a place in the long term management of aviation’s carbon footprint. The following dot points capture some of my key thoughts – they are not intended to be in any order of priority and I must emphasise they are my own subjective conclusions; the trilogy is not intended to be an academic treatise but rather an attempt to communicate information and trigger ideas which I hope will assist policy development discussions: The carbon footprinting of aviation using great circle techniques is not difficult. The input data required to carbon footprint the global aviation system with a reasonable level of confidence is readily available to the public and is not expensive. The computations are straightforward; graphical carbon footprint reports can be rapidly generated using ‘standard’ non-expert software. For most aviation bodies the resources required to carry out a carbon footprinting exercise would be minimal. Validation of carbon footprinting is currently difficult due to a range of issues (see the next Section – ‘Current Situation’). Having said that, great circle computation appears to provide carbon footprint results which lie within 5-10% of the ‘true’ answer. Great circle computation techniques are not suitable for determining carbon liabilities in legislated regimes such as emissions trading schemes (ETS) but would appear to be well suited to environmental reporting (eg ongoing reporting of carbon trends, carbon analysis in environmental assessment processes, etc). I have found the exercise of producing the three books very instructive and now have a much better grasp of the nature of aviation’s carbon footprint. While much of this new information falls in the territory of ‘background knowledge/understanding’ (essential terrain for awareness of potential carbon management options/impacts) there were a number of issues which caught the attention of both myself and/or the readers; these include: the bulk of aviation’s global carbon footprint is generated by a relatively small number of (long haul) flights (this contrasts for example with private motor vehicles where the carbon footprint is primarily generated by a very large number of short trips); the bulk of aviation’s global carbon footprint is generated by a very small number of aircraft types; 1 The carbon footprint of aircraft operations in Australia – 2011, D Southgate, 2012: http://southgateaviation.wordpress.com/2013/02/01/aviation-carbon-footprint-reporting/ 2 Aviation Carbon Footprint: Global Scheduled International Passenger Flights – 2012, D Southgate, 2013: http://southgateaviation.wordpress.com/2013/04/20/76/ 4 CONTENTS: Observations Introduction Countries Airports Airlines Money Validation Profiles Author the United States aviation carbon footprint dwarfs that of most other countries (it is almost three times the size of the footprint of the country with the second largest footprint – China); the US aviation footprint makes up about 25% of the total global aviation footprint; London (Heathrow) Airport stands out as the prime carbon footprint node of global international aviation (its footprint also dominates the global airport total carbon footprint (domestic + international) hierarchy); Australia’s aviation CO2/capita footprint is significantly higher than that for other countries (except for some small nations which are major international aviation hubs), for example while Australia’s domestic aviation CO2/capita footprint is the same as that for the US its total CO2/capita figure is about 25% larger. There is a surprising lack of consolidated aviation carbon footprint reports at the country level. While negotiations on finding ways to manage aviation’s carbon footprint are primarily focused on discussions between officials from United Nations member states, these countries for the most part have not been forthcoming in releasing national aviation carbon footprint reports. The notable exception is India3 and its leadership in aviation carbon footprinting is highly commended. Current Situation Carbon footprinting underpins the management of aviation’s contribution to climate change. There is likely to be little confidence in any internationally agreed climate change management program if its CO2 outcomes cannot be independently tracked and validated. At the present time the confidence that can be placed in the validation of global aviation’s carbon footprint is weakened due to a number of issues: There are no published consolidated reports, derived from a common base of computation, which provide verified carbon footprint information for the global aviation network. There are a number of ‘official’ published sources of fuel use and/or CO2 generation for aviation, both international and domestic, but they are not consistent. For example: it is often not clear what aviation sub-sectors are covered by the published data – the lack of clarity relates to differentiating between, for example, scheduled and non-scheduled operations, freight and passenger traffic, freight carried in dedicated freighters compared to freight carried in the belly of passenger aircraft, military and non-military aviation; some datasets allocate CO2 between ‘domestic’ and ‘international’ on the basis of the ICAO approach (a ‘domestic’ leg of an international flight is treated as ‘international’) while other datasets use the UNFCCC allocation approach (a ‘domestic’ leg of an international flight is treated as ‘domestic’) – the distinction is often not explicitly stated; allocation of CO2 between countries is sometimes based on aircraft country of registration and sometimes on the basis of the territory where the fuel is uplifted – again it is often not clear which approach has been used; there are significant data