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ESG − Under the Hood

  • Article

Air Transport: Asia’s flight path to net zero

  • We map out the path to net zero emissions for Asia’s aviation industry and find that progress so far has been slow
  • Challenges include a lack of regulatory incentives, higher alternative fuel costs, technology hurdles and low industry returns on capital
  • Near term, the impact looks limited, but longer term the shift to sustainable aviation fuels (SAFs) will likely add costs

Emissions watch. The aviation sector represents an estimated 4% of global GDP and 3% of global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. While COVID-19 was disruptive to aviation traffic activity and reduced emissions, updated forecasts suggest air traffic volume growth rates of 3-5% over the longer term, producing a business as usual (BAU) case for emissions to double by 2050 (from 2019 levels).

Regulation. The aviation sector is excluded from the Paris Agreement and partly from the European Union Emission Trading System (EU ETS). However, the industry is directly addressing decarbonisation, despite the light regulatory overlay.

Over the next decade, SAFs are likely to play the most important role in decarbonising air transport. Use of SAFs requires limited changes to aircraft design. However, new production and delivery infrastructure will likely increase costs for airlines and consumers, raising potential concerns regarding equity of access to air transport. Efficiency gains, alternate propulsion and carbon offsets are also likely to contribute to decarbonisation over the longer term.

The International Council on Clean Transportation, for example, recently released a detailed report entitled ‘Vision 2050: Aligning aviation with the Paris Agreement, June 2022’, targeting a 90% reduction in emissions, which can be achieved mainly through the broader use of SAFs. The cumulative abatement reductions can be broken down as follows: 1) SAFs ~60%; 2) improved aircraft efficiency ~33%; and 3) use of hydrogen ~5%.

How does ESG impact our coverage? Over the longer term, given airlines have such large carbon footprints, we think a significant portion of the incremental operating and capital costs related to decarbonisation may be passed on to higher priced customer tickets. This is consistent with historical fuel costs/total revenue for a universe of Asian airline stocks. This expense ratio is volatile across a broad range and is a contributing component to margin volatility.

First published 3rd March 2023

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