The world's major airlines - together with aircraft manufacturers, airports and air navigation service providers - pledged to improve the sector's fuel efficiency by 1.5% annually up to 2020, when increasing air travel should no longer lead to a rise in emissions.
In the longer term, the industry is planning to slash carbon emissions by 50% from 2005 levels by 2050.
The goals were presented at a high-level meeting of the UN's International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) in Montreal on 7-9 October. The airlines are hoping to pitch their sectoral approach to policymakers gathering in Copenhagen in December to hammer out a post-Kyoto climate agreement.
The International Air Transport Association (IATA) stated that the industry is thinking ahead of governments by targeting absolute reductions in the long term.
"It is ironic that industry is setting tougher targets for itself than its regulators are prepared to require," said Giovanni Bisignani, IATA director-general.
In the short term, though, the suggested goal falls short of the 2% target governments in the ICAO have agreed for fuel efficiency improvements. But the sector argues that tough immediate targets would be counterproductive without the backing of public money for research into second-generation biofuels and infrastructure investments.
"Unfortunately, we were recently puzzled to see that the preliminary draft general budget of the European Union for 2010 calls for a reduction in funding for aerospace research and development. This is certainly not the right decision to take if we are serious about developing radically greener technologies on this continent," François Gayet, secretary-general of AeroSpace and Defence Industries Association of Europe (ASD), told EurActiv.
Gayet said that the sectoral approach floated by the industry could easily work within a global carbon market. But he warned that setting emissions targets too tight in the short term would lead to offsetting, thus directing money away from investment in future technologies.
