Is sustainability sustainable?

As the aviation industry finally emerges from two years of total devastation, attention has been diverted back to another major issue at hand: sustainability.

Each year, aviation emits an estimated 1.04 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere – a figure that has doubled since the mid-1980s. It means the aviation sector today contributes between 2-3 per cent to the world’s carbon emissions per year, or roughly the same amount of CO2 emissions as all of Japan. Though, aviation’s emissions are set to rise without serious intervention as demand for air travel continues to grow.

Before the dawn of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020, sustainability was the biggest challenge to the aviation sector, and its discussion dominated industry events, forums, and financial reports. Glancing an eye over the run sheet for the CAPA Australia Pacific Aviation Summit in 2019, many of its panels and keynote speeches focused on gaining and maintaining the unprecedented growth across the aviation sector, announcing fleet and network expansions, mixed in with a side of innovative future solutions to lowering the sector’s emissions.