Keeping net international aviation CO2 emissions at or below 2020 levels (i.e. stabilization of emissions) is an aspirational goal of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO); its ‘2020 Carbon Neutral Growth Goal’. How this might be achieved is still being debated by ICAO, against a backdrop of expected increasing emissions, but it is envisaged to be through a basket of measures that include improvements in technology, operational efficiency, the use of less carbon-intensive fuels than aviation fossil-fuel kerosene, and market based measures.
In this report Manchester Metropolitan University analyse what they believe achieving the 2020 Carbon Neutral Growth Goal for international emissions might mean in terms of ‘climate impacts’, measured here in the accepted science-based metric of CO2 radiative forcing (RF), and compare the outcomes with the ‘climate impacts’ of different mitigation scenarios. The analyses are undertaken for three growth scenarios of aviation CO2 emissions and four background CO2 scenarios, totaling 1,920 simulations.