Evaluation of Worldwide Noise and Pollutant Emission Costs for Integration into Direct Operating Cost Methods

Abstract

This paper analyzes the current Pollutant and Noise (PN) emission costs due to airport charges and CO2 costs due to the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) of the European Union. Based on this analysis, equations for a realistic prediction of PN fees of future aircraft are proposed allowing the consideration of these PN fees in the calculation of Direct Operating Costs (DOC) and consequently their integration into the objective function for aircraft design optimization. Firstly, the PN Emission Fees (PNEF) per flight and passenger (PAX) for 36 commonly used aircraft, at the 50 busiest airports in the world in 2010 (in terms of their number of PAX per year) are analyzed. The PNEF are then weighted against the total number of PAX worldwide. The weighted average of the PNEF of these 50 airports is assumed to represent the average PNEF of all airports in the world. Secondly, the Costs due to the ETS (CETS) of the European Union per flight and PAX starting in 2012 are analyzed. Amongst others, the method is able to consider the current and future European share of worldwide aircraft movements as well as variable emission certificate prices, for several assumptions for the worldwide growth of CO2 emissions of aircraft. Finally PNEF and CETS are included into the Direct Operation Cost (DOC) method of the Association of European Airlines (AEA) from 1989 although any DOC method could be selected. The analysis of an Airbus A320-211 with the AEA DOC-method shows that noise emission fees account for about 0,20 %, pollutant emission fees for 0,02 % and CETS for 0,12 % of the DOC showing that these costs are low compared to other DOC elements. Current PNEF therefore have little influence on the overall economics of aircraft which explains why the economic motivation for more silent or less pollutive aircraft stays low. The economic motivation could be increased by a considerable rise of the PNEF, a higher number of airports charging for PN emissions or the introduction of a worldwide ETS. The proposed method for inclusion of PNEF and CETS in DOC methods is universal and enables to forecast charges until about 2020. It remains however necessary to repeatedly observe the current charges in order to represent them correctly in extended DOC methods also in years to come.