| dc.description.abstract | With an average air traffic growth of 2.8% per year in Europe, the aviation sector is growing rapidly. Currently there are about 9.8 million flights per year in Europe and the projection is that this will increase to about 16.9 million flights in 2030. This growth leads to increased fuel burn and increased greenhouse gas emissions, where carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions emit by far the most of all greenhouse gasses. CO2 emissions from aviation are responsible for 3.5% of the total CO2 emissions in Europe. In order to cope with the increasing CO2 emissions and to make aviation more sustainable, the Single European Sky (SES) is introduced in 2000. It is hereby the idea to operate within a single sky in Europe with common rules, standards, procedures and air traffic management systems. The purpose of this study is to investigate how current air transport and air traffic management in Europe performs and what contribution Single European Sky can have in lowering the environmental impact.
The idea of SES is to improve performance, improve efficiency, reduce route extension and reduce delays. This will lead to increased capacity, less fragmentation and less cross-border inefficiencies, which is beneficial for the environment since this results in a reduction in fuel burn and CO2 emissions. A future scenario is developed in this study, with the forecast that there will be an overall emission reduction in air transport of about 14.5 Tg CO2 in 2020 and a reduction of about 18.7 Tg CO2 in 2030 with full implementation of SES. In the future scenario CO2 emissions increase from 135 Tg CO2 in 2000 to 199 Tg CO2 in 2030 in Europe, which is lower than the baseline scenario. The environmental impact of SES will thereby be 7.55% CO2 reduction in 2020 and 8.56% CO2 reduction in 2030, compared to the baseline scenario. | |
