Since Russia closed its airspace to airlines from dozens of countries in late February – in response to sanctions imposed over its invasion of Ukraine – around 400 flights a month that were previously routed over the country are being forced to take a wider dock, according to Flightradar24.
Instead of using Russian airspace, some flights from Europe to Asia are flying south of the country or, in some cases, taking a painfully long route over the Arctic. And Russia is huge; it is the largest country on the planet – larger than the continent of Antarctica.
The new routes are leading to more air time for passengers and crew, more kilometers flown and more fuel burned – which means more planet-warming emissions.
Japan Airlines flight JL43 from Tokyo to London, for example, uses a Boeing 777-300ER aircraft that burns about 2,300 gallons of fuel per hour. The redirected JL43 flight – which now heads east over the North Pacific, Alaska, Canada and Greenland – added 2.4 hours of flight time and likely burned about 5,600 more gallons of fuel, a 20% increase.
That means Flight JL43 could be emitting another 60 tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, according to calculations by Paul Williams, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Reading, for the CNN. That’s the same amount of carbon dioxide as the average car driving more than 220,000 kilometers, or nearly six times around the planet.
Williams said the exact rate of fuel burn depends on the aircraft’s weight, altitude and airspeed, and some of these variables are unknown. These calculations also do not take into account the warming effect of other greenhouse gas emissions or the condensation trails of flights.
“Of course, a lot of people when they think about aviation and weather, they focus on the CO2 emitted,” Williams told CNN.
“But actually, it’s much worse than that. CO2 is really just the tip of the iceberg. The extra flight time is causing a lot more heating than the kilometers I gave you because they only take CO2 into account and not anything other than CO2.”
Dan Rutherford, director of maritime and aviation programs at the International Council on Clean Transport, told CNN that Williams’ calculations “seem reasonable”.
“At the very least, he’s underestimating the likely impact because, at the margin, long-haul flights become even more fuel-intensive with extra distances because they ‘burn fuel to carry fuel,’ in industry parlance,” Rutherford said.
In other words, it’s a vicious cycle that consumes fuel: it takes more fuel to carry the weight of more fuel.
According to Flightradar24, the aircraft tracking service, there are a limited number of flights – mostly Finnair flights – taking the polar route around Russia. Others are taking a southerly route.
Lufthansa flight LH716 from Frankfurt to Tokyo, for example, added nearly an hour to its flight time. The Airbus A340 aircraft typically burns around 2,000 gallons of fuel per hour, which could mean the extra flight time burned another 1,428 gallons of fuel.
That’s an additional 13,710 kilograms of planet-warming emissions – the same amount released by an average car driving 54,000 kilometers, or nearly twice as many around the world.
Rutherford estimated that if Russian airspace remains closed for much longer, the global aviation carbon inventory could increase by as much as 1%.
That seems pretty low, but air travel is a significant contributor to the climate crisis, accounting for more than 2% of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions in 2018, according to the Environmental and Energy Study Institute. The institute notes that if the aviation industry were its own country, it would rank 6th in carbon emissions.
“[No entanto]I consider it a marginal impact that governments should not consider when setting policy in relation to the Ukrainian invasion,” Rutherford told CNN. “It’s a small price to pay to defend global democracy and the international rule of law, in my personal opinion.”
Flying can represent a large part of a person’s carbon footprint. For example, a one-way intercontinental flight between Hong Kong and San Francisco emits more carbon dioxide than the activities of the average Brit – or 10 people living in Ghana – over the course of a year, according to a 2020 analysis. published in Nature magazine. “Fly less” is often the first line of expert advice for people looking to reduce their climate impact.
But with the aviation industry struggling to decarbonize, Williams said he expects aviation emissions will only increase over time.
“Aviation is finding it very difficult to decarbonize than the rest of the economy,” he said. “As the plane needs a lot of energy to generate the thrust, it is really problematic to move away from fossil fuels. So aviation is a small part of the puzzle today, but in the coming decades it will grow as a fraction of global emissions.”
But now, extra emissions are unavoidable, Williams said. There are no other options than going the long way through Russia.
Airlines can invest in new, more efficient aircraft and switch to sustainable aviation fuels, Rutherford said, but these are long-term solutions. Short-term strategies are limited.
“The extra fuel usage and emissions, and also the extra fuel cost due to higher oil prices in general, are basically unavoidable for airlines,” Rutherford said. “In addition to paying more, they can reduce the payload – passengers or transport – at the cost of some revenue, or they can cancel the flight.”
In February, UN Secretary-General António Guterres said that “current events” showed that the world was very dependent on fossil fuels, calling them a “dead end”.
A recent UN climate report shows that unless Earth warming is drastically slowed, billions of people and other species may no longer be able to adapt to the irreversible changes brought about by fossil fuel emissions.
Rutherford said he expects “renewed interest in the development of alternative fuels in shipping and aviation, to distance these industries from Russian energy exports.”
“This particular war is causing widespread rethinking about the elimination of fossil fuels,” he said.
Source: CNN Brasil
I’m James Harper, a highly experienced and accomplished news writer for World Stock Market. I have been writing in the Politics section of the website for over five years, providing readers with up-to-date and insightful information about current events in politics. My work is widely read and respected by many industry professionals as well as laymen.
