Can airplanes become sustainable?

To reach the objective of carbon neutrality and limit global warming to 2°C, three possible levers will have to be used:

• energy efficiency

• the massive development of alternative fuels

• sobriety

Each lever is necessary, even if we were very aggressively developing the technological and operational levers (new aircraft, ground and flight optimisation, use of new energy vectors, etc.).

Moderating traffic represents, in order of magnitude, nearly 50% of the effort required.

Airplanes will probably never be sustainable. Rather, it is a question of making the sector sustainable in its overall carbon footprint.

To do so, it would be necessary:

• prohibit the development of new airports

• banning flights when a less carbon-intensive alternative exists (replacing airplanes with trains and buses whenever possible, in order to preserve the carbon budget of air travel in cases where air travel is the only viable transportation option)

• Increase the amounts of the ecotax

Aviation provides countless services to society and it is important to build a sustainable future together. However, technology will not be able to do everything if traffic growth is not also addressed.

Air transport is going through a monumental air hole with the Covid-19 crisis. It is imperative to take this into account through the environmental measures to be implemented. However, let's not lose sight of the longer-term climate objectives: the proposals of the Citizen Climate Convention should not be thrown away without further ado. They can be adapted to take into account both the economic impact of COVID-19 in the short term, and the urgent need not to restart "as before".

Further readings:

Carbon offsets are not our get-out-of-jail free card

1% of English residents take one-fifth of overseas flights, survey shows

The path to net zero