Aviation: no climate roadmap stays within all planetary boundaries
A Nature Communications study led by France's INRAE tests aviation decarbonisation plans to 2050 – the climate budget is exceeded in every scenario.
Symbolic image · Photo: Nestek / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped and resized)
Researchers at France's agriculture and environment institute INRAE, together with ENAC, ISAE-SUPAERO and the environment agency ADEME, examined aviation decarbonisation roadmaps, including those of ICAO, ATAG and the European Commission. The study "Current aviation roadmaps are not within planetary boundaries" was published on 13 October 2026 in Nature Communications. Such plans have so far been judged mainly on greenhouse gas emissions – the team instead tested them against all nine planetary boundaries.
The authors calculated "environmental budgets" for aviation, once based on its share of global GDP and once using an ethical allocation principle. The result: no roadmap respects all boundaries at once, and the budgets for climate change and biosphere integrity were exceeded in every scenario. The most ambitious strategies would also sharply increase demand for electricity, biomass, water, agricultural land and carbon sequestration capacity.
This is a modelling study using scenarios and life cycle assessments to 2050, not measured data; the press release gives no specific ranges. The researchers recommend keeping alternative fuels, more efficient aircraft and operational optimisation – and adding policies to manage demand for air travel.