For most of us, air travel is a rare event that can be accompanied by long lines, long waits and lost luggage. But not so for those rich enough to fly on private jets. Instead, those millionaires and billionaires can jet-set around the world with ease, and with little thought to their carbon footprint while doing so.
When it comes to aviation in general — something only a small share of the world's population takes part in — it contributes roughly 2.5 per cent of all CO2 emissions and has thus far contributed to roughly four per cent of global warming. But just how much CO2 emissions are these private jets emitting? Authors of a new study published in the journal Nature Communications Earth & Environment tried to quantify that number.
They found that some people who use private jets could be producing roughly 500 times more CO2 in a year than the average person, globally. Patterns of aviation 2023 The study's authors used a flight tracking system called the ADS-B Exchange, which is used by flight tracking apps like FlightAware and Flightradar24, to gather data from 2019 to 2023 on nearly 26,000 private aircraft, and linked that to 72 different aircraft models and their average fuel consumption. They found that private flights contributed at least 15.
6 metric tonnes of CO2 (MtCO2) in 2023. That equated to roughly 3.6 tonnes of CO2 for each flight — around the emissions of driving a passenger vehicle some 14,000 km from Vancouver to St.
John's and back. And 47.4 per cent .
