Limiting aviation’s full climate impact by market-based measures: Results of the research project AviClim

Aviation contributes to climate change by both long-lived CO2 and short-lived non-CO2 effects, such as NOx or contrail cirrus. According to Lee et al. (2009), aircraft-induced CO2 contributed 1.6% to the total anthropogenic radiative forcing in the year 2005. If both CO2 and non-CO2 effects are considered, aviation contributed 4.9% to the total radiative forcing in 2005. The interdisciplinary research project AviClim has explored the feasibility for including aviation’s full climate impact in international protocols for climate protection and has investigated the economic impacts. The present paper provides results of this research project. In AviClim four reduction scenarios have been designed which differ concerning the level of international support for climate protecting measures. These scenarios have been combined alternatively with an emissions trading for all climate relevant species, a climate tax and a NOx emission charge combined with operational measures. Also, two different metrics for quantifying aviation’s full climate impact have been assumed alternatively: Average Temperature Response ‘atr 20’ and ‘atr 50’. All in all, a global emissions trading scheme for both CO2 and non-CO2 emissions would be the best solution.