Watch: Turning to nature to tackle emissions
Nature-based projects offer the best way for the aviation industry to reduce its carbon impact today and at scale, though cutting-edge solutions such as facilities that scrub CO₂ directly out of the atmosphere hold great promise longer-term, according to Shell’s top climate adviser.
Key takeaways
Nature-based projects could provide over a third of the cost-effective climate mitigation needed by 2030 to stabilise warming to below 2°C.
Though aviation’s carbon emissions dropped in 2020 due to COVID-19, as flights have resumed, emission levels will return and, within a few years, likely exceed the 915 million tonnes generated in 2019.
“For a sector like aviation to go from an emitting sector to non-emitting sector would require a different set of technologies, and they don’t exist,” said David Hone, Chief Climate Adviser for Shell. “So, the [sustainability] journey that aviation will be on is one of developing new technologies, and also recognizing that the way to manage emissions and reach this zero-point is to purchase offsets from other entities.”
“The scalable solution that exists today is what we call nature-based solutions,” Hone said in a recent interview with Joel Makower, Editor-in-Chief of Greenbiz.com. “The simple one, growing a tree. That can be relatively quickly scaled up. Now, a billion tonnes is a very long journey, and it's going to take some years for that to happen. But every indicator is there that the potential for scale is available.”
Though aviation’s carbon emissions dropped in 2020 due to COVID-19, as flight resumes, emission levels will return and within a few years, likely exceed the 915 million tonnes generated in 2019.
That means offsets must work on a large scale to truly mitigate the industry’s carbon impact. Part of the solution will eventually rely on new technologies, but efforts that protect or re-develop natural ecosystems – known as nature-based solutions – can make vital contributions today. In fact, nature-based projects could provide over a third of the cost-effective climate mitigation needed by 2030 to stabilise warming to below 2°C.
“Nature-based solutions represent a very scalable option for aviation today,” Hone said. “And they're important because what they represent is a removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere that equates to the emissions of carbon dioxide from a flight.”
Nature-based solutions can also deliver benefits beyond CO2 removal, such as offering alternative sources of income to local communities, improving soil productivity, cleaning air and water, and maintaining biodiversity.
David Hone, Chief Climate Adviser for Shell“Nature-based solutions represent a very scalable option for aviation today.”
Looking beyond nature
In addition to these solutions that store carbon in the biosphere, methods that sequester it geologically are also showing promise. In Iceland, for example, an innovative approach called air capture is being taken to pull CO₂ directly from the atmosphere and store it underground. But such experimental methods could take years or even decades to work on the scale aviation requires.
“In the short-term, nature-based solutions represent a real measurable and viable option,” Hone said. “But I think in the long-term, as aviation starts to interface with the accounting structures of industry regulations and agreements, like the Paris Agreement, there's a much wider variety of offsets available.”
David Hone, Shell
David Hone joined Shell in 1980 after graduating as a Chemical Engineer from the University of Adelaide in South Australia, initially working as a refinery engineer before becoming the supply economist at the Shell refinery in Sydney. In 1989, he transferred to London to work for Shell Trading and held a number of senior positions in that organisation until taking up his current role as Chief Climate Change Adviser in 2001. David is also Board Member and former Chair of the International Emissions Trading Association (IETA), a global business organisation of some 130 companies.
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