Estimating the US airline carbon footprint

The airline industry decided to embrace going "carbon neutral" by 2050 - an unreachable goal in the view of many. As one wag commented, Zoom and other online meeting Apps have already reduced carbon pollution from air travel by more than the airline will accomplish in the next 20 years. What do US airline carbon footprint calculations show us? Here's how the math works for the calculations we are sharing. Jet-A is about 87% carbon and 13% hydrogen by weight. The carbon inside a gallon of Jet-A (weighing 6.7 pounds) weighs 5.829 pounds. By taking gallons of fuel consumed we can multiply that by 5.829 to gets pounds of CO2 produced. The chart above lists the amount of CO2 produced in tons per flight by year. The picture is somewhat meandering, but when we factor in the distance covered and seat count we get a much more positive view and this shows what we want to see - a clear improvement. Since CO2 produced is directly related to fuel burn, it is obvious the airline with the newest fleet should have the best fuel burn and also produce the lowest CO2. But it is more complex than that. How the airline's network operates also plays a role as the next chart illustrates. We calculated the CO2 produced on a per-seat basis to equalize the results. Looking at single-aisles aircraft, Hawaiian had a relatively awful level of CO2 production, but that improved markedly as it brought in newer A321neos with higher seat counts and longer segments. The impact is clear and shows a near 62% improvement from its highest level. If we take the top ten US airlines and put them side by side, we get the following table. The greener, the better, and the redder the worse the carbon production. Notice how the numbers improved as the industry started adding either MAX or NEO to their fleets. As many industry observers have noted, the fastest way to a reduced carbon footprint is newer aircraft with state of art engines. The data proves this to be true. Readers want to see these numbers by aircraft types and below we show them. The results show that certain aircraft pollute relatively more than others - and the older they are the more they pollute. The E190 and 717 produce the highest levels of CO2, not because they are "bad. Rather this is because of how they are operated - shorter legs. As proof, look at the A220-100 which is flying similar stage lengths - its CO2 production for 2021 is some 20% higher than the A220-300. Which is essentially the same aircraft in terms of engines and wings. The total row acts as an industry average. The single-aisle aircraft with the lowest CO2 production is the A321neo, closely followed by the A320neo and MAX9. It is important to note that the MAX9 is newly in-service and has not built up a statistically consistent number. We are more confident in the A320neo, A321neo, and MAX8 numbers. In US service, the A320neo is exclusively used by ULCCs and its dense LOPA helped to reduce per seat carbon levels. We expect the MAX9 numbers to improve and, perhaps, beat the A320neo. While we don't have data on the MAX8-200 yet we are highly confident it will deliver the lowest carbon footprint based on the data we have. Subscribers can access the data model that produced the charts. One chart that is bound to get a lot of attention is the relative performance across the fleet at each of the airlines. Here's Delta's performance as an illustration. Bottom Line The US airlines have shown a steady improvement in fuel burn by updating their fleet, and the reduction in fuel burn has improved carbon emissions noticeably.

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