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Aviation fuel efficiency hardly improved since 2000, says report

An analysis by the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT) indicates that there has been little advance in the efficiency of commercial aircraft in the last two decades.

The ICCT researchers modelled the fuel consumption of over 25,000 planes produced in the last 50 years. Their results indicate that fuel efficiency increased by 80% from 1960 to the end of the 1980s.

But during the 1990s, however, improvements in fuel efficiency fell to less than 1% a year and after 2000 show no improvement on a per passenger basis, despite dramatic rises in fuel costs.

The results go against conventional wisdom that higher fuel prices drive improvements in efficiency, says co-author of the report Daniel Rutherford.

“This analysis suggests that efficiency improvements actually tend to come with the introduction of new designs, which are much less common today,” he adds.

The ICCT says that fuel prices alone are not sufficient to spur significant improvements in efficiency and an international CO₂ emission standard for all newly built and future aircraft is needed.

Environmental transport campaigner Richard Dyer of Friends of the Earth agrees, saying:

“This report shows that aviation industry claims about the rate at which planes are getting greener are pie in the sky and cannot be trusted.”

For further information:
www.theicct.org/
www.theicct.org/documents/ICCT_Aircraft_Efficiency_final.pdf
www.foe.co.uk

26 November 2009

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