Technology Assessment Group, Laboratory for Energy Systems Analysis, Paul Scherrer Institut, Villigen, Switzerland.
Institute of Energy and Process Engineering, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.
Nat Commun. 2023 Jul 6;14(1):3989. doi: 10.1038/s41467-023-39749-y.
The European aviation sector must substantially reduce climate impacts to reach net-zero goals. This reduction, however, must not be limited to flight CO emissions since such a narrow focus leaves up to 80% of climate impacts unaccounted for. Based on rigorous life-cycle assessment and a time-dependent quantification of non-CO climate impacts, here we show that, from a technological standpoint, using electricity-based synthetic jet fuels and compensating climate impacts via direct air carbon capture and storage (DACCS) can enable climate-neutral aviation. However, with a continuous increase in air traffic, synthetic jet fuel produced with electricity from renewables would exert excessive pressure on economic and natural resources. Alternatively, compensating climate impacts of fossil jet fuel via DACCS would require massive CO storage volumes and prolong dependence on fossil fuels. Here, we demonstrate that a European climate-neutral aviation will fly if air traffic is reduced to limit the scale of the climate impacts to mitigate.
欧洲航空业必须大幅减少气候影响，以实现净零目标。然而，这种减排不应仅限于飞行 CO2 排放，因为如此狭隘的关注会导致高达 80%的气候影响未被计算在内。基于严格的生命周期评估和非 CO2 气候影响的时变量化，我们在此表明，从技术角度来看，使用基于电力的合成喷气燃料，并通过直接空气碳捕获和储存 (DACCS) 来补偿气候影响，可以实现气候中性的航空。然而，随着航空交通的持续增长，用可再生能源生产的合成喷气燃料将对经济和自然资源造成过度压力。或者，通过 DACCS 来补偿化石喷气燃料的气候影响，则需要大量的 CO2 储存量，并延长对化石燃料的依赖。在这里，我们表明，如果减少航空交通以限制气候影响的规模来缓解，那么欧洲的气候中性航空将得以实现。
