How airlines plan to end one billion tons of carbon emissions

In 1928, one person crossed the Atlantic; in 2018 there were 4.3 billion passenger journeys recorded. Although some people managed to avoid it even before Covid – according to a Gallup poll, about half of Americans don’t fly at all — the rest of the U.S. population flies enough to bring the mean up to about two flights per year.

It takes a lot of energy to get people up into the air and, since the production of energy comes at an environmental cost, air travel is a significant carbon emitter, with a unique challenge compared to other modes of transport when it comes to climate change. Unlike innovations in electric cars, boats, and trains — where the added mass required to go electric isn’t an insurmountable engineering problem, and the extension cords aren’t 30,000 feet long — combustible fuel remains largely the only way to fly, at least for longer flights. Eighty percent of emissions are from flights that are roughly 1,000 miles or longer, and for which there is no current viable alternative to fuel.

Each individual has a role to play in bringing down emissions. The average American is responsible for about 15 metric tons of CO2 per year, and more than one-third of Americans say they now are likely to pay a little extra in their airfare for carbon offsets. The rich and famous have an even bigger carbon footprint. Taylor Swift’s much-maligned private jet produces around 8000 metric tons of CO2 annually. But Taylor has nothing on the airline industry, whose annual CO2 emission is pushing one billion metric tons. If the combined air industry were a country, besides having a killer peanut region, it would also have a larger CO2 emission than Germany. 

The industry, though, stresses its small carbon footprint relative to other industries.

U.S. carriers, specifically, transport over 2 million passengers and 68,000 tons of cargo per day while contributing “just” 2 percent of the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions, according to the industry trade group Airlines for America. The aviation industry has become more efficient in recent decades, with U.S. airlines improving their fuel efficiency (on a revenue ton mile basis) by more than 135% between 1978 and 2021. But a focus on how low that 2% figure seems is part of a growing problem, according to climate analysts who study the aviation sector.