Will the Aviation Industry and Climate Change Come in for a Smooth Landing?
Cloaked in fluorescent reflective jackets with the phrase “Please Do Something” printed on the back, 57 protestors from the anti-airport expansion group Plane Stupid cut through a security fence outside London’s Stansted Airport.
It was 3:15 a.m. on December 12, 2008, and the group was on an eco-mission.
They moved with stealthy precision to the runway and set up camp, barricading themselves within fortified fencing.
When airport police arrived on the scene, they were greeted with a simple, but powerful sign: “Climate Emergency.”
Seven hours later, the peaceful sit-in was over. All 57 protestors were arrested, charged with aggravated trespass, and released. But the incursion was a success. During the sit-in, 56 Ryanair flights were cancelled. Per protestor, 41 tons of greenhouse gases were not emitted into the atmosphere.
“Traveling by plane is the single most damaging thing an individual can do in terms of personal carbon footprint,” says Plane Stupid spokesman Joe Ryle, in written answers to questions from TakePart.
The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says aviation is responsible for 2 percent of global C02 emissions.
Aviation advocacy groups and environmentalists generally accept this number. But environmentalists argue that the 2 percent is equivalent to a higher share because “the effect of releasing gases and particles at high altitudes” maximizes the damage, reports the New York Times.
The epicenter of the debate is radiative forcing, defined by Treehugger as "the change in the energy balance in the lower atmosphere by a climate change mechanism."
Radiative forcing is measured by the change in temperature at the Earth's tropopause, which is the area where the troposphere (the part of the atmosphere that contains our weather) meets with the stratosphere (the 30 miles out from there that buffers the planet from outer space).
Airliners spend a lot of time flying along the troposhere, spewing their carbon emissions right where the chemicals most directly contribute to radiative forcing.
Few challenge the greenhouse implications of radiative forcing. But opinions do differ as to how many times more damaging emissions are when layered into the troposphere instead of being dumped at ground level.
Depending on the scientist or the study, the radiative forcing multipler can range anywhere from 1.2 to 4.7.
"There's no scientific consensus on what the multiplier should be—even within the IPCC there's no agreement," says Steve Lott, North American spokesman for the International Air Transport Association.
Dr. Brenda Ekwurzel, a climate scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, says that due to the complicated nature of clouds "it is not settled what that multiplier should be yet."
Ekwurzel is, however, quick to point out the sobering long-term effects of carbon dioxide on the environment: "Twenty percent of the carbon dioxide emitted today will be lingering 800 years hence."
Alas, for now, the agreed upon number for the global aviation industry's responsibility for CO2 emissions is 2 percent—which seems like a pittance.
Still, air travel has been pegged as the fastest-growing stream of climate change pollution—the IPCC says aviation will be culpable for 6 percent of climate change impact by 2050—and environmentalists have targeted the increasingly crowded skies.
The stats are head-tilting. Worldwide, more than 2,000 airlines operate a total fleet of 23,000 aircraft. On any given day, roughly 87,000 flights occupy U.S. skies, according to the National Air Traffic Controllers Association.
Think that’s suffocating?
Wait 15 years.
Come 2025, the number of U.S. airline passengers is projected to exceed 1.4 billion.
Levers of Clean Change
Efforts to reduce aviation’s carbon footprint can be dumped into three general buckets: the personal, the business, and the governmental.
For individuals, the easiest way to scrub the skies is, simply, to not fly.
Still, if you must, do the planet a solid and use the Airline Carbon Emissions Carbon Calculator from Travel Analytics before purchasing your ticket.
Or skip it if you’re fit to compute the carbon Rubik's cube that is air travel—seat position, plane age, plane occupancy, engine efficiency, destination, and route straightness are a few of the variables.
When surfing for your ticket, be sure to avoid layovers. Planet Green reports that “50 percent of carbon emissions are released during takeoff and landing. You can save 272 gallons of jet fuel by booking a direct flight.”
Ticket in hand, you can take two more carbon reduction steps prior to boarding.
Pack less. The same plane that carries you carries your luggage.
Use the airport bathroom. The amount of fuel it takes to flush a toilet at 30,000 feet can power a car for seven miles.
Wait, that’s it?
What about carbon offsets—whereby you can compensate for your flight’s greenhouse gas emissions by financing the planting of trees or renewable energy projects?
British Airways was the first airline in the offset horserace. In 2005, it introduced a voluntary passenger offset program.
Following British Airways' lead, 30 airlines now have their own offset programs, including Continental, Delta, Virgin Atlantic and Lufthansa.
Offsetting isn’t limited to the airlines themselves—middleman travel websites like Orbitz, Expedia and Travelocity offer similar programs, reports The Washington Post.
Unfortunately, the promise of these programs is dimmed by The Guardian’s 2007 in-depth investigation into the shady (under)world of carbon offsetting.
The following paragraph—pulled from the concluding section of the multi-part series—sums up the program in a word:
And how much carbon has BA offset from the estimated 27m tones which its planes have fired into the air since that high-profile moment in September 2005? The answer is less than 3,000 tonnes, less than 0.01% of its emissions—substantially less than the carbon dispersed by a single day of its flights between London and New York. The scheme has been, as BA's company secretary, Alan Buchanan, put it to a House of Commons select committee earlier this year, "disappointing."
The Guardian isn’t alone in questioning carbon offsets.
See the Federal Trade Commission, the United Nations, and the Christian Science Monitor.
In part because of these investigations, the International Air Transportation Association recently launched its own offset program, one that spokesman Steve Lott says will “offer clarity to passengers on where their money is going.”
Asked how IATA's program independently verifies the offsets, Lott was unsure of the mechanism.
Lott later emailed TakePart a link to IATA’s offset program, which states that it is “accredited under the U.K. Government’s offset quality assurance scheme, including endorsement of the IATA carbon calculator tool.”
One of the eight entities eligible to display the U.K. government’s “Quality Mark” for offsetting is British Airways.
Keep in mind that B.A.'s company secretary had deemed its program "disappointing."
Offsets aside, an effective option for businesses and corporations wishing to cut back their aviation carbon footprint is teleconferencing.
It isn’t cheap—high-end systems can cost up to $200,000—but teleconferencing can work, according to a study sponsored by AT&T.
A business with more than $1 billion in annual profits that installs four teleconference rooms can save nearly 900 business trips in the first year. This would slash emissions by 2,271 metric tons over five years.
At this point, it’s time to face the the enormity of this issue.
Even if companies and individuals took every single one of the aforementioned steps to reduce the world's aviation carbon output, it would only make a glancing dent in the mass.
If true systemic change is to be levied, world governments must step up to the tarmac.
One obvious course of action would be for world governments to follow through on plans to re-write the Kyoto Protocol to include aviation emissions.
When the international accord was negotiated in the 1990s, emissions from planes were considered a minor problem, reports USA Today.
As of June, there is no verification that avaition emissions will be on the agenda at COP16, the next U.N. climate change conference, scheduled for late 2010 in Cancun.
For fear of negative economic repercussions, few governments around the globe are eager to cut back on the number of daily flights.
In the U.S. alone, the aviation industry provides 10.2 million jobs.
The lone wolf has been Britain. In May 2010, newly seated Prime Minister David Cameron won kudos from environmentalists—Ryle called it Plane Stupid’s “biggest victory”—for canceling plans to build a third runway at Heathrow Airport.
“A third runway at Heathrow would have resulted in an extra 220,000 flights a year, which is equivalent to Kenya’s yearly emissions output,” says Ryle.
Plane Stupid was one in a “massive coalition fighting the expansion plans” along with Greenpeace, Climate Camp, Airport Watch, and No Third Runway Action Group.
Industry advocates say the ban is economically shortsighted and will threaten Britain’s role as the gateway to the rest of Europe, reports the New York Times.
While the U.S. cap-and-trade bill died earlier this summer, the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) has been up and running since 2004.
By 2012, commercial aircraft that land or take off from one of the 27 E.U. countries will be required by law to trade under the EU ETS.
Lott says that the IATA has disapproved of the EU ETS from the start, adding that the association believes “aviation deserves a global approach” to emissions regulations and not “a unilateral one.”
American Airlines, Continental Airlines, and United Airlines support a lawsuit against the policy filed by the Air Transport Association of America.
Their legal argument is that the European Union does not have the jurisdiction to tax flights to and from the U.S., reports the New York Times.
Their financial argument is that the EU ETS will cost airlines something in the ballpark of $3 billion a year.
“Aviation emissions are borderless,” says Lott. “The worry is that through a patchwork of taxation and trading schemes, airlines will be penalized two, three, four times from the same emissions.”
Environmentalists admit that the EU ETS is not perfect, but argue it is nevertheless a step in the right direction.
In May, the case was referred to the European Court of Justice.
The Skies of Tomorrow
Aviation has a long track record of improving its ecological footprint, and some signs point to a greener future.
“Environmental responsibility is nothing new to us,” says Lott. “Over the past 40 years, the industry has improved fuel efficiency by 70 percent.”
Allowing for price variations at the pump, Lott says fuel represents “between one quarter and one third of all expenses” to an airline.
“So there is already an incentive for airlines to reduce fuel burn."
By 2020, the IATA wants its fleets to be 25 percent more fuel-efficient than today.
To achieve that goal, the industry has undertaken a slew of clean tech ventures.
In 2008, Richard Branson, the British billionaire and majority owner of Virgin Atlantic Airways, tested a jet partially fueled from babassu nuts and coconut oil, reports the BBC.
By 2020, Branson wants fuel for his company’s jet fleet to come from algae or sugar-based biofuel. “The world is awash in sugar,” Branson said in a 2008 interview with the Wall Street Journal. “Sugar is bad for you; so let’s put it in planes.”
Other fuel efficiency undertakings include winglets (which reduce drag), single engine taxiing, and continuous descent approaches (adios to “step down” landings).
Solar-powered planes are years, if not decades, away from marketplace viability.
And one final way that aviation can cleanup its act—flying straighter.
“Flight inefficiencies alone impact fuel burn by upward of 10 percent,” says Lott.
The environment won in July when the European Commission voted to proceed with the creation of a “single European sky” (SES), which will become operational January 1, 2012.
Officials estimate SES will reduce carbon emissions by 16 million tons per year.
In Plane Sight
Founded by three activists in 2005, Plane Stupid now has more than 300 active members in eight U.K. cities. Countless sit-ins have been staged at countless airports. Clever slogans have been created, including "Plane In The Arse" and "The Plane Can't Sustain."
The U.S. aviation industry—as measured in planes, airports, passengers, carbon emissions—dwarfs the U.K.'s in every category.
So where are the American aviation protestors?
A U.S. spokesman for a major environmental organization answers anonymously: "...we're not sure."
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