Aviation Jevon’s Paradox

The “rebound effect” is when there are unexpected effects of improvements to resource productivity, conversation or efficiency on the use of these resources with the behavioral responses that follow it. There are different types of rebound effects with the direct and indirect rebounds. The direct rebound effect is where an energy service becomes cheaper, and drives its own demand leading to increased use of this service. The indirect rebound effect is when there is no additional demand for this service but it leaves space for other services with the money saved. If we face a reduction in the use of the resource after the improvement then the rebound effect is less than 100%. If we face an increase in the use of the resource after the improvement, with the rebound effect being over 100% then we have backfire. These situations combined create the “Jevons Paradox” as both situations are problems with one being not effective enough and the other being counterproductive.

An example of this is with airlines improving their fuel efficiency and making air travel cheaper. This leads to an increase in the number of flights and people that can fly. However, at the end of the day this increases total fuel consumption by the flying. Compared to 40 years ago flights today are 70% more fuel efficient. However, this still has not stopped worldwide CO₂ emissions from growing and by 2050 global aviation emissions are expected to increase by four times. Flights will continue to become more fuel efficient but this leads to cheaper flights. Up until the last few decades flights were something that not everyone could afford.

This seemed very hard to prevent because cheaper flights mean more demand. Even if we continue decreasing CO₂ emissions, people will continue wanting to fly more as there are more flights available. The ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organization) is aware of this problem and met to discuss it. At first they were unable to reach a conclusion but in 2016 ICAO made an unprecedented decision with CORSIA. CORSIA is the Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation. It serves as a global offsetting scheme, where airlines that have volunteered to participate will offset any growth of CO2 above the 2020 levels. This is in an effort to stabilize the growth of CO2 levels while we look for other ways to minimize it. It is important to note that this only applies to international flights and domestic flights fall under the jurisdiction of a different UN agency. The plan is that by 2027 CORSIA will apply to every international flight barring a few exceptions.