It’s Earth Day all over the world and businesses everywhere are making green announcements – ‘tis the season for them, I guess! One such announcement came recently from the US domestic airline Virgin America, which has voluntarily joined the Climate Registry and is reporting its carbon dioxide emissions. There are a number of other carriers who are already providing full accounting of their CO2 emissions and, due to the exacting nature of aviation’s fuel supply systems, our industry has probably the best handle on emissions accounting of any sector.

Last year, commercial flights released 671 million tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. This is slightly less than two percent of the 34 billion tonnes of CO2 that human activity produced. Below is a graph showing the total amount of CO2 produced by the commercial aviation industry over the last decade.

In an ongoing climate change reporting exercise being undertaken to account for the entire travel and tourism sector, it has became apparent that the aviation part of the industry has probably the most complete set of information on its emissions. Now, we just need to reduce those emissions, year-on-year while continuing to bring the benefits of air travel to people around the world… but that is harder work than counting! I feel that it would be a great step forward for all airlines (indeed, all businesses) to fully report their emissions profiles.

Once we count, we can start to reduce – through innovative projects such as this alternative fuel ground vehicle programme at Montreal Airport. And this recently opened taxiway (Echo 4) at Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport which is helping to save nearly 1.1 million litres of fuel each year – or some 2,800 tonnes of CO2, according to my colleague Jon.