Estimating the Cost of Biofuel Use to Mitigate International Air Transport Emissions: A Case Study in Palau and Seychelles

Yijun Hong, Huijuan Cui, Junhu Dai and Quansheng Ge
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Yijun Hong: Key Laboratory of Land Surface Patterns and Simulation, Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, CAS, Beijing 100101, China
Huijuan Cui: Key Laboratory of Land Surface Patterns and Simulation, Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, CAS, Beijing 100101, China
Junhu Dai: Key Laboratory of Land Surface Patterns and Simulation, Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, CAS, Beijing 100101, China
Quansheng Ge: Key Laboratory of Land Surface Patterns and Simulation, Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, CAS, Beijing 100101, China

Sustainability, 2019, vol. 11, issue 13, 1-14

Abstract: International air transport is one of the fast-growing sources of CO 2 emissions. However, it has always been omitted from the international emission mitigation pledges. The delayed mitigation process in this area may slow down the process of global CO 2 emission control. In this article, we evaluated the potential to realize the emission mitigation targets in air transport through biofuel and estimated the corresponding cost. The emission from international air transport of Palau and Seychelles was taken as the example. Then, the emission caused by each airline to these two islands was calculated by the distance-based method, with information of the travelers’ arrival data, fuel consumption of different aircraft types, routes, and aircraft seat data. Future scenarios with and without commitment to CO 2 mitigation targets were predicted to evaluate the emission difference. Then, we estimated the amount of biofuel required to fill the emission gap, and the corresponding cost based on the future biofuel price prediction. The results show that distance is the determining factor of international air transport emission per capita. The component of origin can decrease the aggregated emission per capita to small island destinations by 0.5–2%. The accumulated emission gaps are 3.15 Mt and 9 Mt for Palau and Seychelles, which indicates that 7.64 and 19.34 Mb of biofuel are needed for emission mitigation, respectively. The corresponding costs are $27–163 million and $72–424 million per year.

Keywords: air transport; CO 2 mitigation; small islands; biofuel; cost (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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