Cause and Effect | The skyrocketing cost of air travel on carbon emissions
The contribution of the aviation sector — from private jets to national chartered flights — to global emissions makes it a key target of climate activists.
If a person were to take a flight from Washington to Detroit to Amsterdam to Cairo and back, they would be responsible for 1295.6 kg (1.2956 tonnes) of carbon emissions.
Multiply that by 1.9 to reflect the non-CO2 emissions — as is the standard measure, according to the department of business, energy and industrial strategy (BEIS), UK — and you get the total greenhouse gas emissions from such a journey: 2461.64 kg (2.46164 tonnes)
Why this specific route?
The COP (UN Climate Conference) summit last year was held in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt. Since few cities have a direct flight to the resort town, most delegates from the West took connecting flights to Amsterdam and then flew to Cairo — the other port of landing specified by the organisers.
Assuming 400 delegates fit into one jetliner, a single flight would have led to 518307.60 kg (518.3076 tonnes) of carbon emissions.
Just how high that is can be captured when contrasted with the per capita carbon emissions in India for the entirety of 2021: 1,900kg, or 1.9 tonnes.
And then, there are private jets, which spew out hundreds of tonnes of greenhouse gases per flight, but fly only a handful of people – dramatically raising the per-person carbon budget.
According to an analysis of FlightRadar data by the BBC, 36 private jets landed at Sharm el-Sheikh between November 4 and 6, and an additional 64 at Cairo.
At the climate conference the preceding year, there was an even higher number of private jet activity at and around Glasgow, Scotland, where the summit took place. Some reports suggested 400 private jets took people, including then UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Amazon chairman Jeff Bezos, to Cop26, while some others put this number at 118.
On top of that are national chartered flights, which ferry heads of state and ministerial delegations.
These numbers quantify what has long been one of the biggest targets of climate activists: the aviation sector.
According to estimates by JETNET, there were 23,241 private jets in operation worldwide till last year. Of these, 63% are registered in the United States alone.
Per flight emissions vary depending on size, occupancy levels and efficiency.
Several celebrities came under fire last year after a report revealed that private jets affiliated with celebrities emitted an average of over 3,376 metric tonne of CO2 over a year, which is nearly 480 times more than an average person’s annual emissions.
While some of the biggest offenders dismissed the report, saying the claims were exaggerated, the report did shine a light on the contribution of aviation sector to global emissions.
A report by IEA last year said that in 2021, the sector accounted for over 2% of global energy-related CO2 emissions, reaching around 720Mt.
While climate activists campaign for alternative modes of transport, like trains and cars, these options may not be feasible for longer distances or for heads of countries, given the security risks.
With governments around the world still looking for green fuel options — these include biofuel, hydrogen-based fuel, and ammonia and synthetic fuels — the World Wildlife Fund says that air travel is “the most carbon-intensive activity and individual can make”.
It is unclear when a solution might arrive.
Late last year, Rolls-Royce, in collaboration with easyJet, conducted a ground test of a jet engine that used hydrogen produced from tidal and wind power, in a major step towards zero-carbon aviation fuel.
The world, however, falls far short on the production of green hydrogen to make the switch to green fuel.
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