g-Think | Issue 17 | Airlines and the Environment

One industry that stands to take a hit on its carbon emissions is the airline industry. With airline traffic continuing to grow around the world, attention is being focused on the tons of carbon dioxide even a single commercial flight releases—not to mention the harm done to the ozone later. The technology associated with powered flight has not changed for decades—nor is it likely to for a long time. All we can do is squeeze as much fuel efficiency out of jet engines and lighten up airliners by using composite materials. This indeed is what the major aircraft manufacturers are trying to do. Airbus promotes its new A380 double-decker as “clean and green,” while rival Boeing touts its Dreamliner as offering “environmental leadership,” going so far as to call the newest addition to its lineup “green.”

Despite the hype, the fact is that airplanes are carbon-producing monsters and will continue to be so until some radical new technology appears. But this has not stopped the airlines getting in on the environmentally friendly bandwagon. British Airways led the pack with its carbon-trading scheme in 2005, where passengers were offered the chance to purchase their carbon footprint through a scheme known as Climate Care. It remains to be seen if this program is capturing the attention of the traveling public. According to a report to the British House of Commons earlier in 2007, it was asserted that BA “has only encouraged the purchase of 1,600 tons of offsets on average each year” (the CO2 footprint of just one passenger traveling from London to Sydney is a whopping 5.61 metric tons). The report also criticized BA for not actively promoting its scheme. In fact, it’s hard to find a reference to the scheme on BA’s site (and the same goes for the other airlines offering an offset scheme).

Other airlines tentatively getting into the CO2 trading act are Air Canada, Virgin Blue (Australia), Delta, Continental and, most recently, SAS. Much of the impetus is coming from an increasingly aware traveling public and governments eager to assert their regulatory clout. Already the EU has announced plans to introduce a mandatory carbon-trading scheme for aviation. And now the UK government is getting worried. According to The Guardian, it’s estimated that by 2030 aviation could account for a quarter of the UK’s contribution to global warming. Needless to say, many airlines are crying foul over attempts to regulate their emissions. Many cite the vast sums they are spending to upgrade their fleets to more fuel-efficient models.

Cathay Pacific is representative of the conflict besetting the airlines when it comes to carbon emissions. The airline is implementing a carbon-trading scheme for its passengers, but in a headline “Beware of green muggers: Cathay,” in The Austrlian, Cathay Chief Executive Tony Tyler warned that the “(Asia-Pacific) airline industry must move to prevent a European-style mugging by the environmental lobby or it will find itself drowning in a sea of green taxes.” He went on to say that aviation accounted for just two percent of greenhouse gas emissions—much less than other forms of transport. It seems the airlines want to do it voluntarily, while activists and some governments want regulation, and a lot of the traveling public is confused.

It gets even murkier when the economic future of countries reliant on the long-distance export of goods by freight, and on tourism dollars, is concerned. New Zealand, for example, known for its green and pure image, is becoming a target of green campaigners in Europe who assert that environmentally aware consumers should think twice about taking the 12,000-mile-trip (20,000 km) from Europe to New Zealand.

It’s not only air travel being targeted. Environmental groups are also questioning the ethics of buying meat and horticultural products from the other side of the world when local alternatives have a much lower carbon footprint. The New Zealand government (and some state governments in Australia as well) are sufficiently worried about this trend that they are investigating the possibility of instituting their own carbon-trading schemes and devising PR campaigns to counter the activist offensive. One solution: run Air New Zealand’s fleet on biofuels.

Whatever eventuates, the airline carbon footprint debate is messy and confusing. The statistics are often at odds, there are numerous interest and stakeholder groups with widely diverging agendas, and there is very little accountability: Who is the authority and who takes responsibility?

Postscript
To offset the carbon emitted by planes carrying delegates to and from the Bali Climate Change Conference would require the planting of 4.7 million trees. And that’s a sizable forest (source: Airline Industry Today, December 15, 2007).

Other sources: The House of Commons Audit Committee, July 25, 2007; World Business Council for Sustainable Development, November 6, 2007.