What’s the best pathway to reduce emissions? How can the aviation sector decide which strategies to focus precious time and resources into?
To abate1 the most emissions possible, solutions that are low-cost and highly scalable must be prioritized . A key question is how much each solution costs relative to powering today’s airplanes using conventional jet fuel.
Luckily, there is a tool designed for exactly that purpose.
Meet the MACC
A marginal abatement cost curve (MACC) places decarbonization solutions side-by-side so they can be directly compared.
Each solution on a MACC is represented by a block, for example bio-SAF or direct air capture. In Cascade, the color of each block corresponds to strategies — the core levers for decarbonization: aircraft, operations, energy, and carbon removals.
A block’s width represents the total amount of CO2 that a solution abates per year, measured in tonnes. A block’s height represents the cost of abating each tonne of that CO2.
This means the area of a block (tonnes of CO2 abated x cost per tonne) is the total additional cost of a solution compared to the cost of continuing to use conventional jet fuel.
Some solutions, like more efficient aircraft and operations, have a negative marginal abatement cost because they reduce the overall amount of fuel used.
Efficiency measures alone will not be enough to meet the industry’s emissions-reduction targets, so we must climb further up the staircase into solutions like renewable fuels and carbon dioxide removals that abate emissions but that cost more than today’s jet fuel.
Solutions can shift
The cost and availability of solutions aren’t fixed, particularly in the case of renewable fuels and carbon dioxide removals.
Availability (width) changes based on feedstock supply and our production
capacity, while abatement cost (height) varies based on the cost of the feedstock, its production process, and carbon intensity. All of these factors will vary over time.
A renewable fuel’s marginal abatement cost is calculated as the premium paid over the baseline cost of conventional jet fuel. That means changes in the cost of conventional jet fuel directly impact the cost per tonne of CO2 abated for each renewable fuel.
Because carbon removals don’t replace fuels, their marginal abatement cost isn’t affected by the cost of conventional jet fuel.
Beyond the cost curve
The MACC answers one question — what’s the most cost-effective way to reduce emissions?
But there are other questions to consider when discussing costs. Cascade now offers three additional views, each looking at the cost of implementing solutions through a different lens.
1. How do costs change per unit of energy?
The overall cost paid per gallon or per liter of fuel when including the cost of switching fuels or using carbon removals to abate remaining emissions.
2. How much will operating costs change?
The change in cost of moving cargo and passengers one kilometer or one mile, accounting for the cost savings of efficiency gains in aircraft and operations alongside additional costs like sustainable fuels and carbon removals.
3. What is the total cost to aviation?
Aviation’s total energy-related operating costs. It adds the additional costs from alternative fuels and carbon dioxide removals to the existing costs of conventional jet fuel while subtracting savings from efficiency gains in aircraft and operations.
Try it yourself
With constraints on time and investment, it’s vital to understand, identify, and prioritize solutions with the lowest abatement costs.
But which solutions will those be? Cascade hands you the tools to discover for yourself. Combine solutions, introduce technological breakthroughs, and test scenarios for energy prices to find pathways that have the highest impact for the lowest cost.
