Federal Aviation Administration

Monetizing Aviation Environmental Impacts and Benefits from Abatement Actions

The Federal Aviation Administration is developing a comprehensive suite of software tools that will allow for thorough assessment of the environmental effects of aviation.  Environmental impacts will subsequently be evaluated in the form of mitigation costs, external costs, and benefits (improved societal welfare such as better health, reduced adverse socio-economic effects, etc.). The economic assessment of aviation environmental impacts will include private sector manufacturer and operator mitigation costs of noise and emissions reduction.  Environmental external costs will include health-related and socio-economic costs from aviation emissions and noise.  Benefits will primarily be generated from any reductions in external costs.  Research outcomes are expected in the form of monetizing relationships to enable conducting global-level analyses that include monetized benefits and societal costs. This research project could influence regulatory policy and aircraft/engine technology development that could exceed the $500 million per year threshold definition for highly influential scientific disseminations.  The findings could also be controversial.  A work product should be available to initiate the peer review process in FY 2008.   The overall effort to develop an analytical capability to allow quantifying cost and benefits of mitigating aviation’s environment impact is a long-term effort, however, and other work products might be peer-reviewed in the future.

Highly influential scientific information

Influential scientific information

The Peer Review Plan is still being developed.  The preliminary plan includes the following elements:

(1) The peer review would occur in the second half of Fiscal Year 2008.

(2) This review would most likely be conducted by individual letters.  The PARTNER Center of Excellence, which operates independently of the FAA, will be charged with facilitating the peer review.

(3) The details of the plans for public comments are being refined.  There will be opportunities for public comment on the work product through symposia and public meetings. 

(4) All public comments will be made available to the peer reviewers

(5) We expect to have more than 10 peer reviewers. 

(6) The peer reviewers should have expertise including, but not limited to, environmental and/or welfare economics, microeconomic theory, quantitative skills in econometrics and statistics, transportation economics with emphasis on aviation, cost-benefit analyses related to environmental issues and economic regulatory analyses, and aviation manufacturing and development cost analysis and relationships to technology.

(7) The plan for selecting the peer reviewers is still under development.  Reviewers will be designated by an outside organization (most likely PARTNER in collaboration with its Advisory Board).

(8) The plan to nominate peer reviewers is still being developed. Scientific and professional societies and the public could be asked to nominate peer reviewers.

Dr. Lourdes Maurice

E-mail:

Lourdes.Maurice@faa.gov

Phone:

(202) 493-4293