Abstract
Air travel revolutionized intercity transport, and today it contributes significantly to economic growth worldwide. However, aviation growth has a number of negative consequences, including environmental impacts on air quality, noise and the global climate. A number of new technologies and aircraft operating procedures are under development to mitigate these impacts. These, including revolutionary new aircraft and engine technology, biofuels, improvements in air traffic management, and new airline operating procedures, are discussed in detail in this chapter. A further topic of discussion is policy intervention. Because of the rapid growth in demand for air travel, policy intervention is likely to be required to drive much of the technological developments described and to speed up their uptake into the global fleet. With a combination of technological developments and policy intervention, however, significant progress towards greener air transport is possible.
Keywords
- Gross Domestic Product
- Emission Trading Scheme
- Short Rotation Coppice
- Aircraft Noise
- International Civil Aviation Organization
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
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- 1.
A change in average net radiation at the top of the troposphere (Penner, 1999).
- 2.
Block fuel for a given flight refers to the total fuel used from the moment the aircraft pushes back from the departure gate, before takeoff, until the moment the aircraft arrives at the arrival gate, following its landing.
Abbreviations
- 4-D:
-
Four-dimensional
- ADS-B:
-
Automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast
- BTL:
-
Biomass-to-liquid
- BWB:
-
Blended wing-body
- CCS:
-
Carbon capture and storage
- CDA:
-
Continuous descent approach
- CO2 :
-
Carbon dioxide
- CRC:
-
Conceptual Research Corporation
- CTL:
-
Coal-to-liquid
- DDA:
-
Delayed deceleration approach
- EPA:
-
US Environmental Protection Agency
- ERA:
-
NASA’s Environmentally Responsible Aviation project
- ETS:
-
Emissions trading scheme
- FAA:
-
US Federal Aviation Administration
- F-T:
-
Fischer–Tropsch
- GDP:
-
Gross domestic product
- GPS:
-
Global positioning system
- GTL:
-
Gas-to-liquid
- HEFA:
-
Hydro-processed esters and fatty acids
- HRJ:
-
Hydro-processed renewable jet
- ICAO:
-
International Civil Aviation Organization
- ICR:
-
Intercooled recuperative cycle
- IPCC:
-
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
- LEAP:
-
Leading Edge Aviation Propulsion
- LUC:
-
Land use change
- MIT:
-
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- NACRE:
-
New Aircraft Concepts Research project
- NASA:
-
US National Aeronautics and Space Administration
- NextGen:
-
Next Generation Air Transportation System
- NOx :
-
Nitrous oxide
- RNAV:
-
Area navigation
- RNP:
-
Required navigation performance
- SPK:
-
Synthetic paraffinic kerosene
- US:
-
United States
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Evans, A. (2016). Emissions and Aviation: Towards Greener Air Transport. In: Psaraftis, H. (eds) Green Transportation Logistics. International Series in Operations Research & Management Science, vol 226. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-17175-3_13
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