Short-term carbon emissions forecast for aviation industry in Shanghai

Given the China’s fast-evolving aviation market, a reliable carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions forecast is essential to identify and mitigate the environmental impact of aviation market. Due to slot limits and airport capacity constraints in Shanghai, the rate of traffic growth has slowed down in recent years. However, the increasing number of regional and international flights tends to drive the fuel consumption and carbon emissions to an unexpectedly high level. This study uses a two-tiered bottom-up emissions prediction method for empirically estimating and forecasting air transport CO2 emissions on all the passenger flights to/from Shanghai. The Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) linear model was applied for a 5-year prediction of air transport fuel consumption and en route CO2 emissions. The research established that 36.49 million tonnes of CO2 will be emitted into the atmosphere by the end of June 2021, representing a 6.41% increase compared to the same period a year earlier. Market-based recommendations are proposed including a nationwide carbon market and a carbon offset scheme, accordingly