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Aviation roadmaps overshoot planetary limits, Nature Communications study finds
A study published in Nature Communications finds that none of the currently proposed aviation roadmaps for climate mitigation bring the sector within its share of Earth's planetary boundaries. Assessing scenarios from ICAO, ATAG and the EU's ReFuelEU Aviation initiative, the authors find systematic transgression of the two core boundaries, climate change and biosphere integrity, regardless of storyline, allocation principle or biofuel production pathway. Historical aviation impacts from 1940 to 2022 alone already transgress those boundaries under the ethics-based allocation. Beyond 2022, fossil kerosene drives the transgression, while the environmental burdens of biofuels and e-fuels are highly sensitive to production pathways. The authors conclude that technological improvements alone are insufficient and that combined actions including ambitious demand-side measures are required. Under the study's scenarios, air traffic would need to degrow by 8.6% per year for additional planetary boundaries to be respected.