Accounting of aviation carbon emission in developing countries based on flight-level ADS-B data

The aviation industry is one of the key areas to achieve carbon neutrality due to its difficulty in fuel substitution. In developing countries, aviation industry will be in a period of rapid growth for a long time, which means that it will be more affected by the Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation (CORSIA). Therefore, aviation carbon emission reduction in developing countries needs to be paid more attention. This study utilizes the full sample data of global developing countries' fight-level information of June 2018, including a total of 1,048,655 flight data, to account for the aviation fuel consumption, CO2 emissions, and emission intensity of 109 developing countries based on 70 aircraft types. The impacts of aircraft structure and flight pattern on energy efficiency and emission intensity are explored by combining micro fight-level aviation data with spatial index decomposition method. The results show that the average emission intensity of developing countries is actually better than that of developed countries. Most of them are concentrated in the range of 65–85 gCO2 per seat-kilometers. The emission reduction potential of traditional measures in developing countries can theoretically close to 20%, of which about three-fifths comes from the adjustment of aircraft structure, while the remainder comes from the improvement in flight pattern. There is still a lot of room for structural adjustment of long-haul large-sized aircraft in developing countries by avoiding less efficient four-engine aircrafts and choosing more efficient ones in terms of new fleet deployments. But the potential for restructuring of medium-sized aircraft is limited, thus needing to further improve efficiency by increasing flight distance. Large-sized aircraft should be avoided as much as possible within the range that medium-sized aircraft can reach, which is crucial in route planning in many developing countries.