1887

OECD Statistics Working Papers

The OECD Statistics Working Paper Series - managed by the OECD Statistics and Data Directorate – is designed to make available in a timely fashion and to a wider readership selected studies prepared by staff in the Secretariat or by outside consultants working on OECD projects. The papers included are of a technical, methodological or statistical policy nature and relate to statistical work relevant to the organisation. The Working Papers are generally available only in their original language - English or French - with a summary in the other.

Joint Working Papers:

Testing the evidence, how good are public sector responsiveness measures and how to improve them? (with OECD Public Governance Directorate)

Measuring Well-being and Progress in Countries at Different Stages of Development: Towards a More Universal Conceptual Framework (with OECD Development Centre)

Measuring and Assessing Job Quality: The OECD Job Quality Framework (with OECD Directorate for Employment, Labour and Social Affairs)

Forecasting GDP during and after the Great Recession: A contest between small-scale bridge and large-scale dynamic factor models (with OECD Economics Directorate)

Decoupling of wages from productivity: Macro-level facts (with OECD Economics Directorate)

Which policies increase value for money in health care? (with OECD Directorate for Employment, Labour and Social Affairs)

Compiling mineral and energy resource accounts according to the System of Environmental-Economic Accounting (SEEA) 2012 (with OECD Environment Directorate)

English

CO2 Emissions from air transport

A near-real-time global database for policy analysis

By moving goods and people over large distances, air transport facilitates international trade and tourism and thus contributes to economic growth and job creation. At the same time, it also comes with environmental challenges, largely related to air emissions and their impact on global warming. Air transport has been disproportionately negatively affected by the COVID-19 pandemic with associated reductions in air emissions. However, recent projections show that, in the absence of accelerated technological developments and more ambitious policy measures, aviation-related carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions will grow again at a rapid pace after the pandemic. This paper describes a new OECD database providing near-real-time and global information on aviation-related CO2 emissions, with allocations across countries following either the territory or the residence principle. This database provides a public good for both statistical measurement and environmental policy analysis. On the statistical front, it will facilitate the compilation of global Air Emission Accounts according to the System of Environmental Economic Accounting (SEEA), bring granular and timely information on a significant source of CO2 emissions, and allow tracking their evolution during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. The comparison with official statistics that are available with a significant delay and at lower frequency demonstrates the accuracy of the OECD estimates. On the environmental policy front, it is expected that the OECD database will help monitor the impact of technological developments and policy measures to curb aviation-related CO2 emissions in the future.

English

Keywords: UNFCCC inventories, environmental-economic accounting, air transport, big data, covid-19, seea, climate change, CO2 emissions
JEL: L93: Industrial Organization / Industry Studies: Transportation and Utilities / Air Transportation; Q53: Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics / Environmental Economics / Air Pollution; Water Pollution; Noise; Hazardous Waste; Solid Waste; Recycling; Q56: Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics / Environmental Economics / Environment and Development; Environment and Trade; Sustainability; Environmental Accounts and Accounting; Environmental Equity; Population Growth
This is a required field
Please enter a valid email address
Approval was a Success
Invalid data
An Error Occurred
Approval was partially successful, following selected items could not be processed due to error