Reducing climate change caused by shipping and aviation

Impact: Policy, Environmental

Narrative

Historically, greenhouse gas emissions from international aviation and shipping were regarded as unproblematic and minor, and therefore unregulated in national climate change mitigation policy. The global nature of climate change necessitates a comprehensive emission mitigation framework since partial coverage will be physically ineffective, increasing the cost to society. If international shipping and aviation are excluded from mitigation efforts then other emitting sectors will be required to go further by, for instance, reducing their economic activity or investing in more costly abatement technology, otherwise, all sectors will suffer damages due to greater climate change impacts.

Tyndall Manchester overturned this prevailing orthodoxy. Research led by Alice Larkin, Professor of Climate Science and Energy Policy, highlighted that the aviation sector was producing an increasingly large share of UK CO2 emissions, reaching 10% in 2019 before Covid-19 struck. This large proportion tallied with findings back in 2005 by the research team, that without intervention, aviation emissions were likely to increase to levels incompatible with the UK and global CO2 mitigation targets: if aviation emissions continued to be unmitigated, they would consume a disproportionate share of future emission quotas. This would stunt healthy regional development by forcing more costly mitigation measures on other sectors and risk jeopardising the overall climate reduction objective. Likewise, Tyndall Manchester’s research identified similar challenges within the shipping sector and highlighted the greater potential for finding technical and operational solutions. Larkin and the team concluded that it was necessary to set ambitious CO2 targets for both aviation and shipping as a matter of urgency.

The series of research, funded by EPSRC, NERC, ESRC, and North West Regional Development Agency, has contributed to the inclusion of shipping and aviation in climate policy decisions at regional, national, and international levels over the past 15 years.

In the shipping sector, global CO2 targets have now been set by the International Maritime Organisation (IMO), the UN body responsible for regulating shipping, through the adoption of resolution MEPC.304(72) as a direct result of Tyndall Manchester research. The IMO estimated that because of this policy, the worldwide emissions reductions from shipping will be between 800 and 2,400 million tonnes of CO2 annually by 2050. More recently in 2021, the Tyndall Manchester team submitted a short paper to specify the emission reduction and carbon intensity targets of the IMO’s short-term measures, and in 2023, the IMO further strengthened their global target. In terms of the national debate, in 2022, the team submitted evidence on carbon reduction policy for shipping to the Transport Select Committee, responding to an inquiry on the UK Maritime 2050 Strategy.

In the aviation sector, Tyndall Manchester’s research quantified the extent of technical improvement possible, noting the contradiction between expected aviation emissions growth with the Paris Agreement targets. The Heathrow third runway expansion policy passed by the UK Government in 2019 was rejected at judicial review because of this inconsistency. In February 2021, Heathrow Airport acknowledged that they must prove expansion is compatible with the Paris Agreement before construction of the runway can begin. It continues to inform the debate around future UK airport expansion and is used to guide the campaigning objectives of major environmental NGOs and lobby groups.

The research has helped the city of Manchester better understand the implications of unregulated aviation expansion for its own emissions reduction plans and has been used to support the new aviation emissions objectives included in the Manchester Climate Change Framework (2020–25). The Framework was subsequently endorsed by Manchester City Council in March 2020, formally establishing it as the city’s climate change strategy. The council owns a controlling stake (35%) in Manchester Airport and formally endorsed the draft Manchester Zero Carbon Framework (2020–38) in March 2019. This has reduced investment and policy risk for businesses and local governments by recognising this source of emissions in subsequent spatial and economic planning, avoiding the need for late, costly, reactive responses.
Impact date1 Aug 2013 → 31 Jul 2020
Category of impactPolicy, Environmental
Impact levelAdoption

Research Beacons, Institutes and Platforms

  • Energy
  • Policy@Manchester
  • Thomas Ashton Institute
  • Manchester Urban Institute
  • Manchester Institute for Collaborative Research on Ageing
  • Manchester Environmental Research Institute

Documents & Links

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