Aviation Contrails — Low Hanging Fruit of the Climate Fight – CleanTechnica

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In a recent report, “Contrail avoidance: aviation’s climate opportunity of the decade,” Transport & Environment explained how cheap it was to avoid 80% of the contrails damage. The report was published just before COP29. It got a followup with an event at the conference in BAKU.

Recognizing the impact of non-CO2 effects, particularly contrails, on our warming climate and the urgent need for action, climate scientists and activists called upon global decision makers to implement solutions to tackle non-CO2 effects of aviation on top of decarbonisation efforts. $4 per ticket, the effect of contrails on global warming, could be mostly negated. Airlines think that’s a lot of money. Passengers will hardly notice the less than 1% extra.

The impact of contrails on global warming is at least as big as the the CO2 impact from those passenger planes burning fossil fuels. (Contrails of hydrogen flight are likely worse than of fossil fueled flight, not really a solution.) With simple rerouting, about 80% of it could be avoided. That is nearly halving aviation’s contribution to global warming.

All that is needed is a little cooperation of the airline industry.

To encourage the airline industry and the governing bodies that rule them, T&E initiated an open letter to all concerned.

Beside the signatories to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, now gathered in Baku at COP29, the most concerned institutions are:

• the UN International Civil Aviation Organization
• the EU Aviation Safety Agency
• the USA Federal Aviation Administration
• all the other national and international debating clubs that think they rule the sky
• the boards and C-suits of airline companies.

The main arguments in the letter are easy to understand. To quote some paragraphs from the letter:

Non-CO2 effects of aviation, such as nitrogen oxides and contrails, warm the planet at least as much as aviationʼs CO2. The climate impact of these effects has been known for more than 25 years.

Contrails — created by aircraft flying through cold and humid air — are the most significant of aviationʼs non-CO2 effects. Most contrails dissolve within a few minutes, but in certain conditions, they can persist in the atmosphere, spread out, and become artificial cirrus clouds with a net warming effect. A landmark study estimated that the effective radiative forcing (ERF) from contrails in the year 2018 was larger than the ERF from the CO2 present in the atmosphere from aviation emissions since 1940.

Nonetheless, little effort has been made in the last decades to mitigate the warming effects of contrails. To date, the aviation industry has not been proactive in dealing with the problem.

Recognizing the impact of non-CO2 effects, particularly contrails, on our warming climate and the urgent need for action, we, aviation and climate scientists, call upon global decision makers to implement solutions to tackle non-CO2 effects of aviation on top of decarbonisation efforts.

This is nearly the definition of low hanging fruit. But will there be any movement in Baku? This COP is the COP of Putin and Saudi Arabia and their Njet.