Assessment of the Effect of Aircraft Technological Advancement on Aviation Environmental Impacts

Abstract

This paper studies the evolution of fleet-level emi ssions from aviation under different scenarios of aircraft technology availability and f uel price variation. The aim is to assess the efficacy of introducing advanced technology aircraf t as a means to reduce total emissions while still serving increasing passenger travel dem and. Particularly, this paper explores the potential existence of an effect in the aviation in dustry similar to the so-called the Jevons’ Paradox, in which the profit-seeking airline modele d here uses a larger number of more fuelefficient aircraft so that the increasing number of flights overwhelms the fuel efficiency gains of the individual aircraft. Simulation results conf irm that, while advanced technology aircraft would improve the emissions efficiency of the airline fleet, the advance technology alone would not be sufficient to reduce total fleet -wide CO 2 emissions. This finding implies the need for other initiatives (e.g., operations ch anges, alternate fuels, and carbon policies) to provide incentives to airlines to reduce CO 2 emissions.