“Effective action” to decarbonise the aviation sector has been called for by the World Travel Market’s Responsible Tourism Advisor, as momentum builds towards the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP26.

The 26th edition of the conference will be held in Glasgow from 1 to 12 November 2021 under the presidency of the UK. The World Travel Market (WTM) will be taking place at ExCel London during COP26 – 1-3 November – and will have a day focussed on the climate crisis.

WTM’s Goodwin has teamed up with fellow academics and experts to write a paper about cutting greenhouse gas emissions from aviation: ‘Time for Effective Action to Remove Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Aviation’.

“Aviation emissions, both domestic (40%) and international (60%), are the Achilles’ heel of the tourism industry,” he says. Since COP3 in 1997, CO2 emissions from aviation have almost doubled and currently match the total emissions of the 129 lowest emitting countries’.

For the future of travel and tourism it is essential that the aviation sector moves more rapidly away from fossil fuels, drop-in fuels from waste and biomass and carbon offsetting.

Airbus, and a number of smaller innovative companies are developing engines and aircraft powered by hydrogen and synfuels derived from hydrogen and captured carbon emissions.

This campaign has been developed with Chris Lyle, International Aviation Policy Consultant, and Paul Peeters, Professor, Sustainable Transport and Tourism at Breda University of Applied Sciences. Together with Goodwin they have published the paper on why there needs to be a step change in the way aviation is powered, from fossil fuels to hydrogen and e-fuels.

Although there may be a place for them in the short term while the long term technological developments are created, carbon offsetting and Sustainable Aviation Fuels from waste and biomass are not solutions as they cannot deliver at sufficient sustainable scale.

“Tour operators, tourism authorities, and destinations need to demand that air transport providers remove carbon and other climate-harming emissions, not just to claim green credentials but to assure the industry’s future.”

Currently, aviation is responsible for about 2.5% of the world’s CO2 emissions and 3.5% of human-induced climate change when other greenhouse gases and contrails are accounted for, and 5% when the effects of altitude are considered.

However, aviation could account for up to 24% of global emissions by 2050 unless there is a “significant technological shift”.

“Carbon dioxide emitted now will contribute to climate change – sea-level rise, flooding, drought, and storms – for many decades,” Goodwin writes, “Delaying real emission reductions is irresponsible. Electors and policymakers will most likely press for rapid change as the aviation sector’s failure to reduce its emissions while most other sectors lower their emissions now becomes evident to all.”

They outline the arguments against carbon offsets and Sustainable Aviation Fuels from biomass and waste which cannot provide the scale of change required.

Carbon offsetting “shifts the moral responsibility for carbon reduction to someone else, the quality of offset units is heterogeneous and far from guaranteed, and studies have shown that the majority of even those of the highest standards simply do not work,” the paper says.

Read the full paper by Paul Peeters, Chris Lyle and Harold Goodwin on Zero CO2 emissions aviation.