Science-based climate targets for aviation fall short on mitigation and implementation

Unofficial AI-generated summary based on the public title and abstract. Not an official translation.

🔬研究者:Provides empirical evidence of the mitigation gap in SBTi's aviation pathways, highlighting flaws in target-setting methodology that warrant further investigation.

🏢実務担当者:For airline sustainability teams, this paper shows that current SBTi targets may not align with global 1.5°C pathways, urging them to adopt more ambitious near-term targets and disclose measure-specific transition plans.

🏛政策担当者:Regulators should note that the SBTi framework may permit inadequate targets; policy might need to mandate stricter sectoral pathways and independent verification of corporate climate plans.

Abstract The Science-Based Target initiative (SBTi) provides guidelines for setting company-level climate targets consistent with the Paris Agreement warming limit. Criticisms of this corporate action framework fall into two main categories namely i) issues related to target-setting that result in inadequate corporate targets and ii) issues related to climate action that result in uncertain and lacklustre implementation. Providing a systematic, sector-focused assessment of these issues, this paper investigates target-setting and subsequent company action in aviation, which despite limitations to abatement technology given existing growth projections has seen an uptick in science-based targets. We find that the 2019-2035 absolute emission reductions in SBTi´s sector-specific aviation pathways are 31-44 percentage points smaller than in underlying global emission pathways, with most mitigation occurring after 2030. This mitigation gap means that while aviation emissions made up around 3% of global emissions in 2019, SBTi's aviation emission pathways will take up 5-7% of global 2035 emissions in the Well Below 2°C and 1.5°C reference scenarios. Analysing company-level disclosures to assess action, we find that stated measures focus on efficiency improvements and uncertain, resource-intensive fuel solutions. Based on these disclosures, it is not possible to independently verify whether stated measures enable airlines to meet their emission reduction targets. While science-based targets signal ambitiousness and rapid emission reductions, the framework allows airlines to i) set targets consistent with limited absolute emission reductions in the target period and ii) pursue partial and risk-prone emission reduction strategies. The findings thus point to a need for more stringent near-term aviation pathways, greater transparency in target-setting inputs, and measure-specific transition plans with progress reporting for the SBTi to help close the emission gap for aviation. More generally, the findings call into question corporate climate action and governance that disregard the role of affluent consumption as driver of global heating.

• openalex https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ae7a94first seen 2026-06-11 05:03:39