Social cost of aviation contrails and potential policy measures to reduce it

Research Project, 2024 – 2025

This project aims to address the difficulty in achieving deep emission reductions in the aviation sector. The primary focus is on contrail formation from aviation and estimating its social cost. Further, a secondary aim is to identify policy instruments that can deal with the heterogeneous nature of the problem and incentivize the use of alternative fuel that leads to less contrail warming, and routing of flights around contrail forming regions. We will use the integrated climate-economy model DICE to estimate the social cost of contrail formation from different flights under various meteorological conditions, paths, and timing of the flights.

By focusing on the climate change-related social cost, the project aims to generate insights into how flights can be managed to minimize climate damage for instance by route and altitude modifications or change in fuel depending on meteorological conditions. The results will benefit governments and policymakers to reduce the climate damage from air traffic and contribute to meeting the targets of the Paris Agreement. The results from the project will also be informative for the aviation industry and for consumer on the climate impact of flying.