Single European Sky and its Impacts on CO2-Emissions

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e-zine edition 41 1
ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH
Single European Sky
and its Impacts
on CO2-Emissions
Aviation has been subject to comprehensive changes
over the last decades. Passenger numbers and freight
volumes have boomed and are expected to increase
further in the next few years. Adverse impacts are
correlated to growth rates, and will increase further in a business-as-usual scenario for
the airline industry. One of the themes in the debate on external effects is the discussion
on carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. This discussion is very critical to the aviation industry,
due to the high impact of CO2-emissions in the lower troposphere, and due to the high
growth rates in the air transport sector. Promoted by the airline industry, the implementation
of a Single European Sky (SES) is one step in reducing CO2-emissions in aviation.
This paper examines the potential of a SES for in-flight emission reductions. Actual routes
have been compared using the geodesic distance on selected corridors within Europe.
Introduction
In recent decades, the aviation industry has seen comprehensive
changes, influenced by political decisions (liberalization, deregulation
and privatization of the industry), economic growth
and lower production costs (lower costs per seat-km). These
megatrends are expected to continue within the nearby future
and can be outlined by:
 strongly growing demand in air passenger and freight transport
(growth of around 5 per cent per year (IATA, 2007));
 changes in business models of airlines (e.g. low-cost carriers,
reorganization of former flag carriers, pure cargo airlines,
etc.);
 tremendous enhancement in airport capacity, especially in
Asia (e.g. United Arab Emirates, India, China);
 expansion of regional airports and the efforts of regions to
convert former military airports into civil airports (e.g. Black
Forest airport);
 development in airplane design (e.g. introduction of the
A380 and Boeing Dreamliner, which promise to reduce costs
significantly);
 increase in airline cooperation (e.g. Star Alliance, oneworld);
 increase in capacity constraints at major European airports
(e.g. London Heathrow, Frankfurt).
Growing demand and increasing capacity constraints have
caused considerable and constant increases in the delays in air
transport. This has led to consequences for users and for the
environment, as well as to a considerable financial impact on
the airlines. Many of these delays are caused by the clogging
of the air traffic management (ATM) system, which has apparently
been less and less able to cope with the growing number
of flights (EC, 2007a).
Forecasts for the future show further increases in the supply of
air transportation (about 3.1 percent p.a. until 2030 according
to EC, 2008a) and in the flexibility for passengers to ease air
travel. This will lead to more flights within the European air
network. Adverse effects will emerge, and will be strengthened.
The results can directly affect the industry, e.g. congestions at
airports in the short run, or indirectly in case of external impacts.
One of the main topics in the debate on external effects
concerning air transportation is noise, CO2 and NOx emissions.
Total external effects per 1,000 passenger-kilometers are approximately
52.5 EUR for air transport, according to scientific
studies, which is very high compared to rail transportation (22.9
EUR) (UIC, 2004). The challenging task for the future will be
to decouple emissions from traffic and economic growth.
The EU has defined a comprehensive approach based on three
pillars, namely (1) support research and development for
“greener” technologies, (2) implement market-based measures
and (3) modernize ATM systems (EC, 2008b). Part of the SES
approach is the SESAR initiative, which is responsible for
by: Aaron Scholz, Patrick Jochem, Dr. Anselm Ott
and Paolo Beria
the technological component of SES. Its main objective is to
achieve 10 per cent fuel savings per flight, thereby enabling a
10 per cent reduction of CO2-emissions per flight (EC, 2008b).
The SESAR Master Plan outlines that the optimization of horizontal
and vertical flight profiles have the potential to reduce inflight
emissions by around 4 million tons p.a. (SESAR, 2008).
The airline industry defines the creation of a Single European
Sky (SES) as a milestone in reducing environmental emissions.
SES is seen as the largest single climate change project of the
EU, and CO2-reductions of up to 15 per cent are characterized
as feasible by the industry (Lufthansa, 2006a, Lufthansa,
2006b, Lufthansa, 2007, and TuiFly, 2007). Reductions should
come from shortening holdings (aircrafts flying in a fixed pattern
awaiting permission to land), improving flight corridors
and more efficient routings. In the following paragraphs, we
will concentrate on in-flight reduction potentials.
European Air Traffic Management Policy
The European air traffic management network has slowly been
developed over time. Each sovereign nation uses its own mechanisms
and has set up its own agency for traffic management. In
1919, the International Commission for Air Navigation (ICAN)
was created to develop “general rules for air traffic”, which
were applied in most countries where aircrafts operated (Arndt,
2004). Despite further attempts to unify the network, especially
during the 1960s, more than 25 civil ATM agencies still existed
in Europe, including 58 management centers using 22 different
operating systems (Lufthansa, 2006a). Figure 1 displays the
current situation in the European ATM network.
The complexity of the European system can easily be observed
when the American management system is compared
with its European counterpart. Europe only has half as many
flights than the US, yet 22 different systems exist in Europe
(compared to just one in the US). Same goes for air space, but
more providers operate in the market. These are the reasons
why costs per flight for air transport management are twice as
much in Europe as in the US. The highly fragmented European
air transport management system is characterized as half as efficient
as the US system (EC, 2007b). Table 1 summarizes key
factors for both regions.
To overcome the current heterogeneous situation in Europe, the
idea of a single sky emerged in the 1960s, when Eurocontrol,
the European organization for the safety of air navigation, was
founded. Its strategic objective is the creation of a single upper
sky, which enables the efficient use of airspace. Air traffic
boundaries are still strongly related to national borders, which
results in detours, holding patterns and additional kerosene consumption
(see Figure 1). Therefore, the European Parliament
laid down the framework regulation for the creation of the SES
in 2004 (EC, 2004). Its objectives are:
 to restructure the European airspace as a function of air traffic
flows rather than according to national borders;
 to create additional capacity by optimizing flight routes;
 to increase the overall efficiency of the European air traffic
management system;
 to enhance safety standards;
 to minimize delays.
The European Commission has set 2020 as the target date for
SES to be completed (EC, 2007b).
Potential CO2-Emission Reductions Through Pptimization
of Flight Routes
Potential effective reductions depend on various factors, such
as wind, capacity constraints in the network or no-fly zones.
Therefore, a calculation method has been developed that compares
distances of the current flight route with an optimal flight
route. The optimal route means plotting the geodesic path between
origin and destination. The approach can be interpreted
as an optimistic approach that shows the potential maximum
reduction through optimizing routes. Even with an SES, there
will still be factors that directly influence and constrain the optimal
route choice, such as no-fly zones, congestion and weather.
The approach reverts to some assumptions, which are explained
in the following.
Constant kerosene consumption per flight-km: The approach assumes
constant kerosene consumption per flight-km. This is a
reliable assumption for flights on the same altitude. Only for
take-off and climb flight are much higher consumptions needed
(more than ten times above average consumption). Thus, it is
assumed that aircrafts fly on the same altitude, but they fly different
routes.i The methodology applies a subtractive approach
where the distance of the optimized flight routes is subtracted
from the current flight route distance.
2
Figure 1: Air traffic management zones in Europe. Source: own composition
based on Lufthansa 2006.
European
Continent USA
Air space (million square km) 10.5 9.8
Air navigation service
providers (civil and military) 47 1
Management centers 58 21
Operating systems 22 1
Programming languages 30 1
Flights (in millions) 9 18
Cost of traffic management per
flight (in euro) 742 386
Table 1: Comparison between selected air traffic management information
in Europe and the US (Source: Lufthansa, 2006a and Eurocontrol,
2004).
No-fly zones: There
are territories over
which aircraft are
not permitted to
fly. These areas are
mainly military territories
(e.g. Royal
Air Force barracks), buildings of executive authorities (e.g.
Buckingham Palace) or sites of special cultural interest. The
total size of the no-fly zones is small compared to the total size
of Europe. Route choice decisions, especially in the upper sky
(aim of the SES initiative), are only slightly influenced by nofly
zones, and have therefore been neglected in the developed
approach.
No holdings: Holdings are mainly caused by congestion around
airports, which are bottlenecks for the industry. Holdings are
considered in the actual flight data, but are not considered
in the reduction potential analysis because of
multifaceted parameters (e.g. weather, congestion,
emergency flights). Furthermore, the comprehension
of holdings in current routes emphasizes the optimistic
approach, which has been chosen for the analysis
at hand (subtrahend increases while the minuend
keeps constant).
In the following, we highlight six exemplary European
flight routes, which are mapped in figures 2 to
4. The flight routes have been chosen because of their
importance (flight frequency) in the European air network,
and according to the number of possible ATM
crossings to become a gauge for the potential efficiency
gains. The actual database has been provided by
Eurocontrol, and it consists of around 6,200 flights of
August 2007.
Flights from
August 2007
have been
chosen for
two reasons:
First, August
is traditionally
a holiday
month in Europe
with a lot
of air traffic
and congested
routes. Based on the developed subtractive approach, congested
routes generally lead to increasing flight distances (detours),
which are considered in the minuend. As the ideal flight route
keeps unchanged (subtrahend), flight data from the summer holiday
month August support the objective of calculating potential
maximum reduction. Second, data for only one month could be
provided by Eurocontrol. The authors decided in favor of data
from August 2007 for the abovementioned reason.
The Eurocontrol database included route length and data on
latitude and longitude for key points on the route for each of the
6,200 flights. Information on route length has been used for calculating
potential reductions, whereas geographic information
has only been used for mapping the routes (Figures 2 to 4).
The most frequently flown intra-European route is Madrid-
Barcelona (Eurostat, 2007). Even though it is a short distance
in a single country, the origin and destination
are located in different ATM
zones. It is not surprising that the actual
routes appear to be very straight when
compared to other relations, such as
Barcelona-Amsterdam, in which about
five different ATC zones are flown over,
and in which in particular the outbound
flights are far off the geodesic path (see
Figure 2).
Looking at an East-West relation – here
the Paris-Warsaw link – flights seem
to be more straight, even though they
3
Figure 2: Flight routes Amsterdam-Barcelona and Madrid-Barcelona
Source: own mapping based on data from Eurocontrol – August 2007.
Figure 3: Flight routes Paris-Warsaw and Frankfurt-Berlin
(Source: own mapping based on data from Eurocontrol
– August 2007)
cross about five different ATM zones (see Figure 3). Considering
the most frequent intra-German route (from Frankfurt to
Berlin), the routes are far from direct connections.
On diagonal European routes, flights are nearly on geodesic
paths, even though they cross between four to six different
ATM zones. Considering the corridor London-Rome and Munich-
Helsinki, flights are relatively straight, but a large number
of different routes is chosen (see Figure 4).
This research compares the actual distance with its geodesic
path. The real distances are taken from the Eurocontrol database
for August 2007. The data from the geographic information
system for each flight is available, which allows the reconstruction
of the actual flight corridor. The shortest distances
between origin and destination, the geodesic path, are gained
from GIS software.
Table 2 summarizes the findings and displays the average savings
for each direction. General savings are achieved for each
single relation. The level of saving heavily depends on the relation
itself, the total distance and the number of ATM zones
that is crossed.
Conclusion
Looking at the increasing CO2-emissions in aviation, the introduction
of the Single European Sky (SES) can really reduce trip
length within Europe, and thus reduce CO2-emissions in aviation.
In short, by harmonizing the European ATM, in-flight savings
of fuel consumption can be achieved for many inner European
flights. Furthermore, holdings are expected to be reduced
because of optimized collaborations between ATM, airports and
airlines. Both effects, in-flight savings and reduced holdings,
are economically very valuable to airlines. Production costs per
seat-kilometer can be decreased, and reliability increased. Together
with optimized technology, aviation might mitigate 0.6
megatons of CO2, in Germany alone (BDI, 2007).
In a market environment with a high degree of competition,
lower production costs will be (at least partly) forwarded to the
customer. Furthermore, a more efficient ATM may also lead
to lower costs of air traffic management per flight. Both effects
will lower air fares, which create additional demand that
will be served by the industry. Finally, optimized flight routes,
resulting in reduced flight times, allow for a more efficient use
of the airplanes (more flights). Scenarios are conceivable in
which emission reductions based on fuel savings per flight are
overcompensated by induced emissions caused by lower production
costs.
Estimations made by the airline industry show fuel savings of
up to 15 per cent per flight due to the implementation of the
SES. The authors ascertain a similar magnitude for the emission
savings per flight. From an economic point of view, the
introduction of the SES should be supported to overcome the
inefficient situation in Europe.
4
Figure 4: Flight routes London-Rome and Munich-Helsinki Source:
own mapping based on data from Eurocontrol – August 2007
Origin Destination Savings
(%)
Frankfurt (FRA) Berlin-Tegel (TXL) 14
Berlin-Tegel (TXL) Frankfurt (FRA) 12
Munich (MUC) Helsinki (HEL) 5
Helsinki (HEL) Munich (MUC) 8
London-Heathrow (LHR) Rome-Fiumicino
(FCO) 9
Rome-Fiumicino (FCO) London-Heathrow
(LHR) 6
Amsterdam (AMS) Barcelona (BCN) 8
Barcelona (BCN) Amsterdam (AMS) 9
Warsaw (WAW) Paris-Charles de
Gaulle (CDG) 5
Paris-Charles de Gaulle
(CDG) Warsaw (WAW) 9
Barcelona (BCN) Madrid (MAD) 7
Madrid (MAD) Barcelona (BCN) 13
Lisbon (LIS) Bucharest (BBU) 4
Bucharest (BBU) Lisbon (LIS) 5
Table 2: Savings in distance on selected flight connections within
Europe due to the implementation of a Single European Sky
e-zine edition 41 5
In the long run, adverse impacts of the SES on the environment
are multilayered and are thus complex to estimate. Cost reductions
per flight may result in additional demand due to production
cost savings per flight. Therefore, further policy measures
are necessary to reduce overall CO2-emissions in Europe. An
emission trading system (ETS) with a European or even global
coverage is seen, by the authors, as a comprehensive supplement
to the SES. Unlike the SES, ETS allows emission caps to
limit total emissions. And, a sophisticated ETS does not only
include the airline industry, it covers the total economy and
leads to a better allocation of resources. On November 13 2007,
the European Parliament agreed on a directive launched by the
European Commission to incorporate the air transportation industry
in the ETS by 2011. The directive plans to include intracontinental
and intercontinental flights in the trading system.
The proposal will now be discussed by the European Council of
Ministers, which has the last voice in this decision.
Biographies:
Aaron B. Scholz is a research fellow at the Institute for Economic
Policy Research of the Universität Karlsruhe (TH) since 2005. At the
Institute Aaron works as a transport analyst and project manager. He
studied business engineering at the Universität Karlsruhe (TH) with a
main focus on micro and macro scale transportation issues. Aaron holds
a Postgraduate Diploma in Applied Science (major in Transport and
Logistics) of the Lincoln University (Christchurch, New Zealand). His
fields of interest are air transport especially air cargo and the assessment
of transport infrastructure projects.
To contact Aaron Schloz: aaron.scholz@iww.uni-karlsruhe.de
Patrick Jochem is a PhD-scholarship student of the German Federal
Environmental Foundation (DBU) and a research fellow at the Institute
for Economic Policy Research of the Universität Karlsruhe (TH). He
studied economics (Dipl.) at the universities of Bayreuth, Heidelberg
and Mannheim. Before 2006 he was working as a research assistant at
ZEW (Centre for European Economic Research), Mannheim, and as a
research fellow at BSR-Sustainability, Karlsruhe. His research interests
are in the field of transport policy, transport modeling, econometrics,
CO2 emission trading, and sustainability.
Paolo Beria is carrying research and professional activity at Milan
Politecnico University, TRT Research Centre and Milan Transport
Authority (AMA). The fields of interest are economy, regulation and
assessment of transport projects, and in particular, issues concerning
transport megaprojects. Paolo is a lecturer in Transport Systems at
Milan Politecnico and in Transport Economics at IULM University in
Milan. He is co-author of two books in Italian and published numerous
international papers in journals and in international conferences.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank Patrick Tasker from Eurocontrol for
his support.
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i In the calculation the authors abstract from wind directions for inter
European flight routes, which could reduce fuel consumption considerably
for intercontinental flights.

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