Source · Select Committees · Environmental Audit Committee
Recommendation 20
20
Deferred
Require consultation on airspace-wide contrail avoidance and account for non-CO2 aviation effects.
Recommendation
Within six months of the publication of this report the Government must consult on airspace-wide contrail avoidance measures. Furthermore, given the significant role that non-CO2 effects play in global warming, the Government must account for these in its assessment of the overall impact of the aviation sector. (Recommendation, Paragraph 82)
Government Response Summary
The government acknowledges the recommendation but defers action on contrail avoidance consultation and accounting for non-CO2 effects due to significant uncertainty and ongoing research. It highlights a £29m R&D programme and a task group assessing feasibility, with findings to inform future policy.
Government Response
Deferred
HM Government
Deferred
The Government recognises that aviation has both CO2 emissions and non-CO2 climate impacts that need to be addressed. However, there is significant uncertainty about the interaction of non-CO2 effects with the atmosphere and therefore the nature and magnitude of their impact on the climate. The Government’s focus to date has therefore been on better understanding these impacts and on identifying and developing potential mitigation options. In 2023, a cross-government Non-CO2 Research and Development Programme was launched, worth up to £29 million over a four-year period. To date, the Programme has awarded funding to 13 projects for academic and industry-led research worth nearly £20 million, some of which are investigating the climate impact of contrails and contrail modelling technology. The Government plans to fund further projects over the Programme’s lifespan. In addition to this, under the Jet Zero Taskforce, the DfT launched a Contrails Impact Mitigation Task and Finish Group to assess the feasibility of contrail avoidance measures as a potential mitigation option for addressing aviation’s non-CO2 impacts, as well as to better understand trade-offs with potential additional CO2 emissions. The findings will be published in due course and will be used to inform future policy development and research. There is currently no agreed consensus on what metric or time horizon should be used to measure aviation’s non-CO2 impacts, and how their global warming effects compare to CO2. The Non-CO2 Research and Development Programme is funding a project on metrics, and its findings will help inform decisions on how Government and the sector should account for, and assess, aviation’s overall climate impact.