Transportation's Role in Reducing U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions ...

Transportation’s Role in Reducing U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions: Volume 2
for less than 1 percent each of total emissions (if passenger access to and from the airport
is not included). Airport facilities make up between about 1 and 5 percent of total
emissions. Aircraft ground operations are not identified separately but should be a small
fraction of landing and take-off operations, which are about 10 percent of total aircraft
emissions. If total aviation emissions could be reduced by around 1 percent through
airport equipment and operations strategies, the savings would be about 2 to 3 mmt CO2
annually.
Table 4.5 Airport Greenhouse Gas Emissions Inventories
City and County
of Denver (2005)
Port of Seattle Aviation
(2006)
Zurich Airport
(2006)
Metric
Tonnes CO2 Percent
Contributor
Metric
Tonnes CO2e Percent Tonnes CO2 Percent
Aircraft 4,569,696 94.9% 4,220,098 98.0% 2,816,907 97.3%
Landing
and Take-Off 348,195 8.1% 255,322 8.8%
Cruise 3,871,903 89.9% 2,561,585 88.5%
GSE 14,051 0.3% 45,438 1.1% 27,229 0.9%
GAV 21,968 0.5% a 13,021 0.4%
Facilities 211,000 4.4% 40,636 0.9% 37,586 1.3%
Total 4,816,715 100% 5,093,988 100% 2,894,743 100%
Source: Kim et al. (2008).
a GAV emissions at the Seattle airport included passenger access by all modes, which totaled 788,000 tonnes
or 15.5 percent of all emissions. These were removed to be comparable to the Denver and Zurich estimates,
which only included on-site ground access vehicles and not all passenger access travel.
Efficiency savings through the aviation operations strategies discussed above could be
largely if not fully realized within 10 to 15 years. Many of the ATM/free flight
technologies already are partially in place or have been tested in operations, and roll-out
can continue as funding is available. Some of the more advanced RNAV technologies for
in-flight routing are still in development but deployment could commence before 2020
(PARTNER, 2009). Eleven ADS-B ground stations have been installed in Florida and a
majority of the nationwide system is planned to be fully installed by 2013. Currently,
complete aircraft equipage is likely to be required only by 2020 in order to make the costs
to operators more affordable. Programs and incentives to accelerate equipage plans could
help realize the efficiency benefits sooner.
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