The team at Tomorrow's Air is always busy tracking the latest trends and developments from the dynamic sectors of carbon dioxide removal and sustainable aviation fuel. Through our technical supply partners and through the conferences, panel discussions, newsletters and research reports we monitor, Tomorrow's Air keeps abreast of what's happening and offers a monthly digest in our Airrow Bulletin.
Global Tourism Emissions Stats Update:
It was 2018 when Lenzen et. al. published their research, Carbon Footprint of Global Tourism in Nature. At the time, researchers using data from 2009-2013 estimated that travel was responsible for 8.8% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Last December, one of the lead researchers from that work (Ya-Yen Sen from University of Queensland) published an update to the original study, this time working with global and national tourism carbon footprint data from 2009 and 2020. The new team delved more deeply into the factors driving tourism’s increasing emissions and found that emissions from tourism are increasing as a result of “slow technology improvements and a rapid growth in demand.”
Other key findings:
The university researchers offer slightly higher emissions for tourism than the World Travel and Tourism Council, whose second edition Net Zero Roadmap (also published late last year) uses data showing that in 2023, “Travel & Tourism accounted for 6.5% of all emissions globally, down from 7.8% in 2019.”
Either way, tourism emissions are significant and must be addressed. The WTTC Net Zero Roadmap suggests that between now and 2030 businesses focus “on achieving carbon neutrality through a combination of emissions reductions and removal.”
Sustainable Aviation Fuel
Overall we continue to see that the future of SAF is influenced by four factors: supply from producers; demand from the market; industry incentives from governments; and technological processes. While the U.S. and Europe have different regulatory approaches, they share a common goal: put more SAF into production and use. The new EU regulations mandate increasing blends of SAF for flights originating in the EU. In the U.S., an incentive approach has been adopted with specific sums payable per gallon of low-carbon fuel produced. The SAF Grand Challenge is a production target, in contrast to a mandated usage target.
Carbon Removal 2024 in Review from CDR.fyi
The carbon removal market grew 78% in 2024 with the total purchased volume reaching almost 8 million tonnes. However, researchers found that 80% of purchases are coming from Microsoft, Google, Stripe, and Frontier Airlines.
A worrying indicator for carbon removal is that the number of unique purchasers grew only 7% and first-time buyers declined by 18%. Eagerly anticipated for 2025 is the “Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTI) Net Zero Standard 2.0,” which is expected to include strong, mandatory milestone targets for CDR purchasing. This type of guidance could bring in many new buyers.
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