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You may have (or, let's face it, may not have) heard about the project called Single European Sky. It is a project to streamline the current national airspace boundries that have the skies over Europe split into some 30 different blocks. Currently, flights crossing the European continent have to zig-zag across a number of different control zones. With a single European control zone, millions of tonnes of carbon emissions could be reduced (not to mention time saved) by flying straighter and smarter routes.

One of the major projects that is underway to enable a single European sky is called SESAR - this is a joint European Commission and Eurocontrol effort to produce the technical capability required. And it is here that we get on to another project (and more acronyms).

SESAR has joined with the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration - the US Government's aviation regulator) to run the AIRE programme (for more information on this - including what AIRE stands for - check out the video below). Today, SESAR and the FAA announced in Amsterdam the results of a year-long set of trails looking at different areas of flight operations and working with an impressive array of industry stakeholders.

Six projects were initiated, taking place in Paris (ground movements, green arrivals and departures), Madrid and Stockholm (green approaches and climbs), Portugal and Iceland (oceanic flight optimisation). In total, 1,152 flights took place during the AIRE trials in 2009. Analysis of the data collected show that 400 tonnes of CO2 could be saved by implementing these new techniques.

The Executive Director of SESAR, Patrick Ky had this to say: “The AIRE activities performed in 2009 have shown encouraging results. It is now essential that we transform them from ‘flight trials’ to ‘day-to-day operations’, in order to realise the full benefits of SESAR."

Almost as impressive as the fuel savings and all the acronyms are the group of people working on the project - over 1,400 engineers from organisations across Europe are working on various SESAR projects. In fact, over 300 projects are getting started. Collaborating on the AIRE project alone were the following industry partners: ADACEL, AENA, Aéroports de Paris, Airbus, Air France, AVTECH, DSNA, Egis Avia, Iberia, Icelandair, INECO, Isavia, LFV, Nav Portugal, Novair, TAP Portugal, TERN Systems and Thales. Just another example of impressive aviation industry coordination!

“You’re next holiday may be powered by weeds” wrote Dominic O’Connell in the Sunday Times this week and indeed he may be right... Last week we saw a passenger biofuel flight by KLM and the last in a series of ‘MINT’ flights; this week sees development through British Airways who have taken a big step into the world of biofuels by starting trials in conjunction with Rolls-Royce. The trails involve conducting largescale ground tests of a range of fuels made from plants and will take place as of next year. BA will buy up to 240 tonnes of four kinds of biofuels for its research. The data generated by the tests should help speed the certification of the fuels for commercial use, with regulatory approval expected towards the end of next year.

Latin American airliner, GOL, announced this week their plan to have all aircraft be equipped with sensors to enable the use of the GPS Landing System, as well as Vertical Situation Display, as of January 2010. GOL predicts the GPS Landing System will become the dominant global technology in the near future. This equipment permits continuous ascent or descent which reduces fuel consumption and the emission of environmentally harmful gases by up to 15% in these flight stages. Enhancing this is the Vertical Situation Display which allows pilots to accurately identify, from the cockpit, information on ground relief and obstacles therefore permitting more efficient landing planning, reducing landing component wear and tear and, consequently, future maintenance expenses.

Elsewhere, there has been a request to ‘Switch off!’ by Stansted airport as they launch their new energy awareness campaign. Rather than leaving appliances on standby, airport staff are encouraged to save power by switching off therefore saving power, reducing emissions and by transferring this practice to home as well, saving some money on energy bills! This initiative is a part of the airport’s Energy Management Plan to reduce CO2 emissions from airport buildings and infrastructure by 30% by 2020, compared to 1990 levels. Other initiatives at Stansted include installation of a biomass boiler which has brought a 75% saving on gas consumption in the terminal building, use of movement sensors in office areas to turn lights off when areas aren't in use and a move to introduce low energy lighting across the airfield.

Effort has been truly industry-wide this week, with praise due across the board from engine manufacturers to airports for their improvements in regards to their environmental performance. 

The Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore (CAAS) has been named the Air Navigation Services Provider of the Year by the Centre of Asia Pacific Aviation. CAAS has been recognised for its achievements in operational efficiencies that improve fuel efficiency thus reducing costs and emissions, such as the improved management and shortening of routes.

DFW International Airport in Texas has also been reducing emissions and has been recognised by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for its efforts. The airport was recently pushed up to number 11 in the EPA’s top 20 Local Government List of the largest green power purchasers. The airport purchases nearly 53 million kWh of green power per year, which is enough to meet 18% of the organization’s purchased electricity use. According to the EPA, this is equivalent to avoiding the CO2 emissions of nearly 7,000 passenger vehicles per year, or is the equivalent amount of electricity needed to power more than 5,000 average American homes annually.

Frankfurt Airport looks set to make improvements in this area as well. A project has been launched to look into the potential of the Walldorf deep-earth geothermal field as resource for renewable energy. If all goes well, the partners will construct a hybrid power plant, which will use geothermal power and biogas to produce electricity and heat which will then be used to supply Frankfurt Airport with renewable energy, so fingers crossed!

And finally, Rolls Royce won a contract this week with Virgin Atlantic to power ten of the carriers’ aircraft with its state of the art Trent 700 engines. Six of the aircraft that are to be supplied are Airbus model A330’s, which will feature an enhanced performance version of the Trent 700… and what does that mean? These enhanced Trent 700’s improve engine fuel burn by a further 1.3% over the regular models, helping Virgin Atlantic’s to pursue its mission to fly a modern fleet with the most fuel efficient technology available.

In other news, the Doha Aviation Summit2009 this week brought together internationally recognised associations, civil aviation authorities, ministries of aviation, airports, airlines and leading service providers to discuss various current issues the industry is facing. Much time was dedicated to the industry’s action on tackling environmental issues, with input in particular from Christohpe Cros from Airbus, who offered advice to the aviation market on new technology that lowers emissions and works towards a carbon neutral aviation industry. The conference suitably concluded with a 'Green Aviation' day where panelists discussed the carbon free future of aviation providing different perspective on development and deployment of new technologies, efficient usage of infrastructure, progress and utilisation of alternative fuels and the role of the government and institutional bodies in ensuring the carbon neutral growth.

Swedish airport and air traffic control operators have teamed up with home carrier SAS to undertake an intensive week-long trial of continuous descent approaches (CDA) at all airports across Sweden. CDAs are a new way of bringing aircraft from cruising altitude to landing by gliding in smoothly and continuously, rather than the traditional stepped approach. By reducing engine power, these landings produce less CO2 and are quieter for communities around airports.

The purpose of this latest trial is to gather information on a new technique for CDAs and how it works across a country's airport system. This trial is one of many being conducted around the world, but CDAs are also commonplace in a number of airports already. In fact, at the Aviation & Environment Summit earlier this year, it was announced that there would be CDA used in over 100 airports across Europe by the end of 2013 - this would save over half a million tonnes of CO2 annually.

This is far from the first environmental initiative being introduced by LFV:

• Straightening routes through their airspace
• Lowering emissions through a range of small initiatives
• It is the first airport group in the world to be carbon neutral - a move being followed by a number of other operators.

No-one will argue with the fact that our industry has too many acronyms and abbreviations. The amount of jargon is high - I even have trouble keeping up with it sometimes. At the recent Aviation & Environment Summit, we made two announcements - one on the implementation of CDA at airports across Europe (that's continuous descent approach) and the other on a global plan to bring about PBN (performance based navigation).

To introduce you to some more acroynms, here is a video produced by the US FAA on the NextGen air traffic control system that the industry has been asking for for quite some time. In fact, a group of organisations from across aviation have now got together to demand 'NextGen now' - urging the US Government to speed up the delivery of this system which will save millions of tonnes of CO2 annually.

If you can excuse the cheesy music, this video explains very nicely what NextGen will mean - remember, for every minute saved in flight, fuel is saved and emissions are reduced.

In the entry below I wrote about the Declaration calling for the rapid implementation of Performance-based Navigation (PBN). You can watch the video of the announcement by CANSO Secretary General Alexander ter Kuile at the Aviation & Environment Summit.

(Photo by JustinHession/Getty)

"From a communications perspective, making a special announcement on April 1st is a challenge," Philippe Rochat, the former Executive Director of the Air Transport Action Group, noted this morning at the Aviation & Environment Summit in Geneva. But undeterred, major groups in the aviation industry signed a Declaration calling for the rapid implementation of Performance-based Navigation (PBN), an air navigation concept that leads to safety, efficiency and environmental improvements for aircraft, particularly on their approach to an airport.

PBN has already been put in place in a number of airports, where the benefits have become very clear. For example, Qantas and Airservices Australia have developed PBN arrival procedures for Australian airports. In the first year, Qantas flew 1612 PBN approaches to Brisbane in low visibility conditions, which reduced normal distance flown by 17,300 nautical miles and reduced CO2 emissions by 650,000 kg. Overall, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) estimates that shorter PBN routes could cut CO2 emissions by 13 million tonnes per year if globally implemented.

The Declaration, backed by organisations such as ICAO, IATA, CANSO, IFATCA and ACI calls upon all leaders of the civil aviation community to actively implement PBN in accordance with ICAO provisions. Implementing PBN requires a true total industry approach, hence the wide industry support. It also reaffirms how important global cooperation is to the success of projects such as this. It's a theme we've seen time and again at this Summit and it was great to see a real example of it this morning.

As CANSO Secretary General Alexander ter Kuile said, "From the perspective of air navigation services, it does not get any better than this."

Click here to view the Declaration and the signatories.

A major announcement has just been made at the Summit - a group of four industry associations have got together and agreed to the largest implementation of continuous descent approaches (CDA) ever deployed. CDA, for those who want to know, is when aircraft descend from their cruising altitude to landing in a smooth, continuous approach (green path), rather than the stepped approach (blue path) that they usually use.

It sounds simple, but the new technology in both aircraft and air traffic control now being used has only just made these types of landings efficient enough to use at a lot of airports. There have been trials in place and a few airports have been using them here and there, but with today's announcement by ACI Europe, CANSO, Eurocontrol and IATA, over 100 airports across Europe will be implementing these landing approaches by 2013. It is estimated that this will save over 500,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide each year in Europe alone. For more information check out the press release.

It is a peculiarity of the travel industry that, just as everyone else is winding down for the holiday season, we are at our busiest time of the year. Over the next few days, millions of people will fly to see loved ones all over the world. Then they will fly back again. Check-in agents, cabin crews, pilots, air traffic controllers, airport staff and all parts of the industry will be working hard to make holiday travel as easy as possible – despite having to grapple with the weather.

But behind the scenes, there are projects underway that not only will reduce delays, but also help the environment. One of the difficulties the aviation industry has in flying from one place to another is having to navigate around normally closed military airspace. The US Department for Transportation has, for the last couple of holiday seasons, worked with the Department of Defence to open up some sections of military airspace, in order that flights can have more direct routings. These so-called “Holiday Express Lanes” in the sky can have a massive impact on the distance flown and the fuel burnt. In fact, US secretary of transport Mary Peters suggested in a recent speech that just one route over California shaved some 99,000 miles off flights last Christmas and New Year. My question is: why can’t we find a way to open more of these routes for more of the year?

Norway’s national air navigation service provider Avinor is also getting in on the act, with two special “Green Routes” for Christmas flights from the UK to Lapland to visit Santa Claus. These more direct flight tracks will save potentially 1,000 nautical miles over the same flights last year – reducing CO2 by an estimated 15 – 20 tonnes each day.

And my old friends at Air New Zealand couldn’t resist pointing out the potential damage that reindeer… um… emissions can cause, as they pull Santa’s sleigh around the world. For example, a large moose (which I assume to be fairly similar to a reindeer in emissions) can produce the equivalent of two long-haul flight’s worth of greenhouse gas each year. Anyway, the Air New Zealand video is rather amusing:

Season’s Greetings from the team at enviro.aero!

- Image of Lapland (Santa's home, don't you know) from Flickr user mararie

The new terminal at Indianapolis International Airport opened last month, replacing a terminal on one side of the airfield with a brand-new one in the centre of the airfield, between the two runways. Big deal, I hear you say? Well, it is! Not only is the new terminal much more passenger friendly and, quite frankly, better-looking than the 50-year-old building it replaces, but it is also much more environmentally efficient. It is the first US terminal building to be built according to the exacting LEED environmental specifications from the ground-up. But the building itself only offers part of the environmental benefit – where it’s situated is also very important.
 

Previously, aircraft landing on one of Indianapolis’s two runways had to taxi for over 12 minutes to reach the terminal. Now, with the gates much closer to the runways, around eight to nine minutes have been shaved off the taxiing time. Aside from getting passengers to the gates or runways faster, and reducing delays, and reducing the need for aircraft to cross active runways, the new airport layout will save fuel. A lot of fuel – in fact, by my (admittedly very rough) calculations, over the course of a year it may save around 26,652,000 kilogrammes of fuel which could reduce emissions by 84,000 tonnes of CO2! Check out this Google Maps view of how IND looked as construction started three years ago:

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While we are on the subject of airports, you might be interested in Auckland Airport’s new website launched yesterday, which has a section dedicated to their comprehensive sustainability programme. Make sure to look out for information about lift – a project that encourages airport employees to catch public transport to work or carpool (in fact, over 600 airport staff are now part of what is probably the biggest carpooling scheme in New Zealand).

- Image by Flickr user vaanroy_13