By Robert McLachlan*
After two years of entry restrictions, New Zealand is re-opening its borders. Already, New Zealanders can re-enter the country without quarantine; they will be followed by Australians on April 12 and the rest of the world on May 1.
Families will be able to reunite. Grandparents will be able to visit new grandchildren for the first time. And the tourist industry is very keen to get cracking again.
But as international travel resumes, we should make sure flying doesn’t return to 2019 levels. That was incompatible with a safe climate and global emissions targets. At 2019 levels, there would be just ten years of flying left in the carbon budget for 1.5℃.
In 2019, New Zealand aviation emissions were 4.9 million tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO₂), having risen 43% since 2014 to become the sixth highest in the world per capita. At 12% of New Zealand’s total CO₂ emissions, they were a substantial chunk to be dealt with.
Domestic aviation is included in New Zealand’s Emissions Trading Scheme (NZETS) and carbon budgets. International aviation emissions are measured but are not included in national targets or regulations.
Last November, at COP26 in Glasgow, New Zealand joined the International Aviation Climate Ambition Coalition and committed to:
Preparing up-to-date state action plans detailing ambitious and concrete national action to reduce aviation emissions and submitting these plans to ICAO [International Civil Aviation Organization] well in advance of the 41st ICAO assembly.
This assembly of the UN’s International Civil Aviation Organization will take place in September 2022.
How to cut aviation emissions
In a new report, economist Paul Callister and I look at all the options. What would “ambitious and concrete action” to reduce aviation emissions look like for New Zealand?
Change is in the air. There are new proposals for net zero aviation by 2050 from the EU, the UK, the International Air Transport Association, the International Energy Association, and Air New Zealand.
In New Zealand, a two-seater electric plane with a 130km range crossed the Cook Strait for the first time in November last year. Unfortunately, its larger cousins won’t be here soon enough or in large enough numbers to affect emissions overall.
Despite the media attention on electric and hydrogen aircraft, they do not feature strongly in New Zealand’s plans. Larger electric aircraft don’t exist yet and we need to act sooner than they will become available.
Better fuel technology
Offsetting (by planting trees, for example) is a temporary fix. It transfers risk to the next generation and does not get at the root of the problem, which is burning fossil fuels. Most pathways do not rely on much offsetting.
For the next few decades, emissions will be determined by traffic volumes, efficiency and sustainable aviation fuel.
Efficiency can be encouraged by using the most fuel-efficient planes (and possibly banning the others), filling them as much as possible, flying efficiently and increasing the price of fuel through a carbon charge or a sustainable fuel mandate, or both.
Sustainable aviation fuel is the main technological solution on the table. By 2035, New Zealand could conceivably build two NZ$520 million wood-based biofuel plants, producing 57 million litres a year each, and one 100MW e-fuel plant producing 40 million litres a year. Together they would provide 8% of New Zealand’s jet fuel at 2019 levels of demand.
However, neither of these technologies are yet in commercial use; the first demonstration plants are only now under construction. The uncertainties are large.
Traffic volumes are affected by price and regulation. Industry projections of very high growth (up to 120% by 2050) are not compatible with the Paris Agreement.
The present free ride for international aviation (no GST, no carbon charge, no fuel tax) is an obstacle. But now that the EU is considering a tax on jet fuel, this could change.
Curbing frequent flying
Flying less is the main remaining tool in the toolkit. Air travel is strikingly unevenly distributed. In Europe, 90% of households have aviation emissions of 0.1 tonnes of CO₂ per person per year (equivalent to one Auckland–Sydney return trip every four years); 9% emit 0.8 tonnes (Auckland–LA every two years); and the top 1%, 22.6 tonnes (Auckland–London six times a year).
So less frequent flying, especially by the hyper-mobile, has to be part of the solution. Non-flyers cannot reduce their aviation emissions. The Jump campaign asks people to limit flights to one 1500km return flight every three years, a level derived from a study of urban lifestyles compatible with 1.5℃.
The natural experiment of the COVID pandemic prompts the question of how essential such frequent flying is to well-being.
Stats New Zealand monitors well-being following international guidelines. While 81% of the population reported high overall life satisfaction in 2018, this rose to 86% in 2021. People adopted substitutes for international travel, including telecommunications, domestic tourism and local tourism.
The economy also grew, up 3.4% from 2019 to 2021.
However, there are confounding factors, namely the government stimulus, social solidarity and knowledge of the health risks of travel.
A recent UK study considers the role of curbing excess energy consumption in a fair transition. After comparing ten possible definitions of “excess”, they conclude that:
excess is whatever people can agree it is, based on ideas of “fairness” and “just” levels of consumption that can be rationalised, defended and justified to others … any policies that are used to target excess consumption and excessive consumers must be similarly reasonable and justifiable, based on the principles of deliberative democracy and exploring options, impacts and fairness with members of the public.
Two key events of the past decade reinforce the urgency of the situation. The first is the proven ability of the New Zealand aviation industry to increase emissions at a staggering rate when unregulated, as observed from 2014 to 2019. The second is COVID. Ensuring that aviation emissions remain permanently well below 2019 levels will make the longer-term task significantly easier.
*Robert McLachlan is Professor in Applied Mathematics, Massey University This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
45 Comments
After being virtually trapped in these borders for two years? Good luck with that.
Already lining up a weekend in Sydney to catch up with friends, then there is the family in Melbourne, and a wedding that postponed in Chch. I suspect that flights will be just as busy as they were.
Catching up with loved ones - does that include future generations thereof?
Discounting of the future is an interesting little animal, isn't it?
Funny enough, the capitalist system is likely to be the killer of massed flying; the pursuit of endless growth on a finite planet caus
Who is this idiot ? Did he really mean 1 x 1500km trip every three years. So that would not even get from Christchurch to Auckland and back. I could get to Norfolk Island as part of a trip to Australia and the whole trip to Australia would take 12 years given I’m only allowed 1500kms every three years. Where do they find these people…Sorry mate, hate to break it to you, but this year I’ll fly Auckland - Christchurch several times, go to the USA and do lots of internal flights, go to Australia probably a couple of times and maybe to Europe too.
Yeah I can see the problem. The problem is an idiot suggesting we can't travel anymore because he wants to eat lentils and hide under his bed and thinks we can all do the same. The solution is to defund idiots like this and take away their oxygen so they don't/can't write BS like this and expect people to accept it as fact.
It is marked as an opinion piece to be fair.
The Jump project might make sense to people that live on a continent with decent rail infrastructure and 4+ other countries within a 4 hour drive. It's simply nonsense for an island with ~2000km of open ocean between us and the next significant dot on the map.
""International aviation emissions are measured but are not included in national targets or regulations."" This is where the problem starts. It is not too difficult to assign the emissions to either the country of departure or the country of arrival. For most countries it is a very minor part of their emissions but not NZ.
I wrote and asked my MP about it several years ago - I couldn't understand how our govt (his party was in power) could simultaneously claim climate change was an emergency, a critical issue and of highest importance to NZ and at the same time use taxpayer's money to promote international tourists to fly to NZ. His reply was we didn't have to worry since the emissions were not counted.
BTW I realise how important air travel is greenhouse emissions but nothing will stop me visiting my family in Europe - that has my highest personal priority. Meanwhile I will catch buses and leave the car at home and minimise my waste and keep the house fairly cold in winter.
I would suggest a new $30 tax per ticket for each incoming and outgoing international flight in and out of NZ. Ringfence the tax and apply it directly to growing native seedlings to replant uneconomic eroding backcountry land and unforested Dept of Conservation land.
I'd settle for any one at this point. The New Zealand government just lacks the technical ability to manage major civil engineering projects. Maybe we need to re-establish a Ministry of Works to plan and implement projects? At the moment it's overseen by an array of agencies that are way out of their depth.
A few more ferries probably wouldn't hurt if we actually had a decent rail service to get people to them. The current situation of a day for the expensive train Akl-WLG, then a ferry ticket and another train to get to chch, vs one flight (call it 3 hours including check-in etc) is not a hard decision for anyone that puts any value on their time.
We should fund a trip for a few transport ministers in waiting and local council CFOs to visit Norway, population 5.4 million, spread across two major cities and four minor towns, and 2000 inhabited islands - almost all connected with functioning, integrated public transport. Oslo to Bergen line crosses the alps @ 1222m. I understand our geology is a bit ‘younger’ and offers some challenges, but I’ve sat in a high-speed carriage as it generally coasted to an emergency stop in Japan during a magnitude 7 earthquake, so it’s like to believe we could do it. Is there any other country in the world where you can link 9 of the top ten population centres with a single, almost straight line on the map and only lift your pencil once?
I absolutely agree, but part of me still refuses to accept that it can’t be done. Ride your bicycle from Tekapo A to Oahu C and tell me we can’t do it. And for bonus points, tell me how we let that national infrastructure fall into the hands of private shareholders, and what exactly we invested the proceeds into.
This argument regularly gets wheeled out by people who have no interest in admitting or addressing climate catastrophe.
I rate complex interstate negotiations on emissions reductions to literally save the planet a bit more worthy of air travel over the well-heeled flitting around the world funded by their rental portfolios.
Funny you should mention it.
I have two friends who were part of the NZ delegation, and who posted plenty of content from their COP27 trip to their private Instagram profiles. Seemed to be a lot of business class flying (naturally) going out to expensive dinners or getting on the wines.
I'm sure there were some productive conversations had ... but you've got to wonder how much was just an excuse for a jolly-up you can feel smug about because it's done for the right reasons.
I hope they paid for the carbon offsets ;)
I mean you can't win right, there's plenty of comments on here decrying self-flagellation in the name of the environment. My point is this sort of thing is mostly used as a bad faith argument against doing anything to address climate change. If the call is for governments to take the issue *more* seriously I'm right behind you.
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