A UK aviation coalition including airport operators BAA, airlines BA and Virgin Atlantic and the CAA have published a new interim code of practice this week, designed to help cut aircraft emissions by reducing fuel burn from aircraft at airports. The document is technical in nature, and so primarily targeted at pilots, flight planners and airport operators who are collectively encouraged to get involved in methods such as single-engine taxiing, once safety considerations are assured. By shutting down an engine during taxi-in operations pilots are told they could achieve reductions of 20-40% of the ground level fuel burn and CO2 emissions, and 10-30% of ground NOx emissions, depending on aircraft type and operator technique.

The environmental practices that are highlighted in the document are also said to deliver significant improvements to noise and local air quality at airports and reduce costs to airlines. Thus as well as providing global environmental benefits, it delivers additional local benefits to people living and working around airports.

The voluntary set of guidelines has been published ahead of the full version of the code that is expected to be finalised early next year, which will include advice on the use of airport terminal and ground power rather than running the aircraft's auxiliary power unit, 'continuous climb departures', and collaborative decision making to deliver further improvements.

Today, a group of airline chief executives will sit down with government and environment leaders at the UN in New York at one of a series of pre-events before December’s Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Copenhagen.

By all accounts, the negotiations for the next Kyoto Protocol are not going as well as they should be and today’s event has been described as ‘shock therapy’ for getting the stalled talks going again. The aviation industry also hopes that, this time, we will be included in the international agreement. So today in New York, industry leaders such as Willie Walsh from British Airways and Mats Jansson from SAS will be presenting the industry’s plan for dealing with our emissions.

Importantly, this plan is from across the aviation industry. While airlines will be in the room today in New York, the plan is backed by airports (through ACI), airlines (through IATA), air navigation service providers (through CANSO) and aircraft and engine manufacturers (through ICCAIA). This is, as far as we know, the only global industry able to stand up together and point to one plan for dealing with our emissions.

So what is our plan?

• From 2020, we will cap emissions – CO2 from aviation will continue to grow until 2020, at which point it will be capped.
• In an aspirational goal, by 2050, we will work towards producing half the net emissions we produced in 2005 – the equivalent of around 320 million tonnes of CO2.

So, how can we achieve this while passenger numbers continue to grow? The reductions come from a number of areas which all begin to add up to some significant savings. Early last year, the entire sector signed up to the Aviation Industry Commitment to Action on Climate Change. This document layed out a four-pillar approach which will see reductions through technology, operations, infrastructure and economic measures.

In the technology section, for example, replacing old aircraft with newer, more efficient places will reduce emissions by 21% over ‘business as usual’ in 2020. The introduction of sustainable biofuels could shave off a further 5% (based on a low but realistic penetration of biofuel into the jet fuel supply – with governments really getting behind a sustainable biofuel industry, this could bring a bigger saving).

The huge range of operational measures available to the industry, such as reduced auxiliary power unit usage, more efficient flight procedures, and weight reduction measures, could achieve another 3% cut in emissions.

An additional 4% cut in emissions will come from improving the efficiency of air traffic control through government-led infrastructure projects such as NextGen in the USA and Single European Sky in Europe.

And the rest? To ‘plug the gap’ once we have reduced emissions as much as we can, the industry will need to engage in economic measures. This could include, for example, emissions trading. But whatever form this part takes, the industry is united in agreement that it must be worldwide in nature. Doing things country-by-country, or one region at a time causes competitive distortion and doesn’t provide a global solution for what is the most global of industries.

The most exciting announcement (and the most immediately challenging) from my point of view is for us to achieve carbon neutral growth from 2020. It will require an enormous effort by everyone across the industry (from aerodynamic specialists to ramp agents, pilots to chief executives and everyone in between), but our industry rarely shies away from a challenge. And we are up for this one!

Today's guest blogger is The Rt Hon Brian Wilson, former British Member of Parliament and current chair of Flying Matters, a UK coalition of aviation companies.

The UK Environment Secretary, Ed Miliband, recently declared that lower-income people should not be priced out of flying on environmental grounds. The UK Treasury appears to have no such qualms about airborne elitism since the impact of draconian increases in Air Passenger Duty, dressed up in spurious green clothes, will be exactly the one that Mr Miliband has rejected.

The vast majority of us take it for granted that we will, occasionally, be able to afford to visit friends and family in far flung places or to go on holiday abroad. It is a remarkable change from just 30 years ago when flying was still the preserve of an elite. It would be unjust and futile to implement policies designed to revert to that position.

The Government’s own figures confirm that the current rises in APD are expected to price over a million and a half people out of flying each year – with the prospect of much more to come.

The fundamental unfairness of these flight tax rises is evidenced by a recent study by the UK National Centre for Social Research which showed that people on low and middle incomes were most likely to stop flying altogether when prices were forced up, whilst those on higher incomes simply change to cheaper destinations.

The figures are eye watering. The tax will rise in stages so that by November next year a family of four flying to Jamaica will pay £300 in tax alone, compared with £160 now. The same family will pay £340 in tax to go to Sydney, more than double the current rate.

Research carried out by Populus showed that nearly half the population have loved ones living abroad and that many people combine holidays with visiting friends and family. The research also showed that cost of travel is the main factor in how often they can visit their loved ones abroad.

And what of those parts of the world which rely heavily on UK tourism to support their economies?  Kenya, Sri Lanka, the Caribbean, to name a few. There is real fear that the cost of flying to these countries will put off so many visitors that their economies will be badly hit.

If the blatant unfairness were not enough, the tax is completely ineffective in environmental terms.  APD is not hypothecated for environmental purposes. It doesn’t go towards research to reduce emissions either in aviation or other industries, whereas the aviation industry already spends more than £2.5billion a year on R&D to reduce its climate impact.

The UK is out of step on this issue given progress on ETS at EU level and the focus at the Copenhagen Summit in December on securing the inclusion of aviation in a global scheme to address its climate impact. Unilateral action by the UK government will cause economic pain for no environmental gain.

There is no economic or environmental justification for this socially regressive measure. As the UK public realise that the doors to the world are beginning to close for a large number of them, they may well express their disapproval at the ballot box. This time, The Environment Secretary is right and the Treasury is wrong.

I noticed a number of interesting stories in media this week. An article in EurActiv on Wednesday featured an interesting interview with Raffaello Garofalo, the Executive Director of the European Algae Biomass Association (EABA). EABA was launched on 5 June to address the lack of legal framework in Europe for the production of algae-to-biofuels.  Garofalo outlines the potential of algae as a source for biofuels since it does not need productive land that can be used for food, a common accusation that is made of biofuels. It also grows at exponential rates in polluted seawater where most other organisms die. There are even processes by which algae can algae absorb the pollution as a nutrient, allowing the water to be cleaned up and returned back to the ocean. To read the interview in full, click here.

Another article that caught my eye concerns the EU’s Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS). According to a report to be published by RDC Aviation and Point Carbon, the aviation sector could face a shortfall of 77 million tonnes of CO2 when it enters the EU ETS in 2012. The report finds that at the current spot price of €14.40 per tonne of CO2, the cost of having to purchase the necessary credits is likely to be in the region of €1.1 billion, with British Airways and US carriers facing the largest shortfalls.

On a slightly more optimistic note, Gulf Air has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Bahrain Government's General Directorate for the Protection of the Environment and Wildlife, in a major step forward in the airline's corporate social responsibility initiatives. Gulf Air Head of Corporate Social Responsibility Sameer Has-san Al Saeed told Gulf Daily News that "It (the MoU) has to be done now because if we leave it any longer then we will lose business; it's as simple as that." Staying in the same geographical region, Qatar Airways has been elected as a member of the International Air Transport Association’s Environment Committee (ENCOM) and also recently joined IATA’s new carbon offsetting programme.  I think all these examples shows that the industry is only stepping up its environmental initiatives in the current economic climate, showing that an economic downturn provides an even greater incentive for a reduction in carbon emissions.

 Today’s guest blog is written by Ben Caldecott, Head of the Environment & Energy Unit at Policy Exchange, a London-based think-tank.

If left unchecked emissions from aviation are set to account for up to a fifth of global greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. This is clearly unsustainable and such a scenario should not be allowed to occur. To dramatically reduce emissions from flights that can’t be avoided, the aviation industry is going to have to deploy innovative technologies quickly. The current approach – of steadily improving aircraft fuel efficiency by approximately 1.5% per annum through better engines and airframes – can make an important contribution. These efficiency improvements will, however, be overwhelmed by the ever increasing number of flights, especially from large emerging countries such as China and India.

To really make a difference we need technologies that can be applied to all aircraft: old and new alike. The only credible option for dramatically reducing emissions from aviation is decarbonising the jet fuel used by all aircraft. Policy Exchange last week released our latest report, Green Skies Thinking: promoting the development and commercialisation of sustainable bio-jet fuels, which sets out how this could be done.

In the report, we recommend Governments to set targets for the replacement of standard kerosene jet fuel with sustainable bio-jet fuel from 20% of the jet fuel supply in 2020 to 80% by 2050. We also recommend that aviation be prioritised for the use of biofuels (over road transport and other uses), as it is the most effective use of biofuels. Governments must also place a priority on ensuring that the start-up bio-jet fuel market gets off the ground through research tax credits.

As covered by this website, sustainable biofuels in aviation are technically feasible and will be imminently certified as safe and compatible to be used in conjunction with standard jet fuel. If deployed in Europe under Policy Exchange’s proposals they would result in reductions of greenhouse gas emissions from the UK and EU aviation sectors of 15% in 2020 and 60% in 2050 relative to current predictions. Their deployment in the UK would result in emission reductions worth £37.41 billion between 2020 and 2050, as well as making a significant contribution to meeting the UK’s 2050 emission reduction target.

These fuels are not prohibitively expensive. If our proposals come to fruition, bio-jet fuel production costs may fall to around US$80 per barrel by 2030. This compares well with average jet fuel prices of US$62.29 per barrel from 2000 to 2008 and the jet fuel price peak of July 2008 when it reached US$167.70 per barrel. Just as importantly, the marginal land used to produce sustainable bio-jet fuels is ample, so enough feedstock can be cultivated to meet current and predicted total jet fuel demand.

For all of these reasons the development and commercialisation of sustainable bio-jet fuels should become a priority. Bio-jet fuels currently represent the only viable option for significantly reducing emissions from aviation without cutting the number of flights flown. Despite their potential, the current policy framework in the UK and EU is unable to deliver their deployment and commercialisation. This is partly because current policies do not support the investors and developers involved and fail to create the demand needed to enable commercialisation. Given the contribution they could make to reducing emissions from aviation, this should change.

Last week, I wrote about how the least developed nations of the world believe they can prepare themselves for the impact that climate change will have on their lives. This blog has concentrated a lot on how our industry is working together to reduce our contribution to climate change. But it is also important to recognise that, as the earth's atmosphere changes, that shift also has an impact on how our industry itself operates.

I am at a conference in Manchester, being organised by the Omega partnership. We heard yesterday from a MetOffice climate scientist about some of the climate and weather impacts that Europe can expect in 2030, 2050 and 2080, according to the latest modelling. Even if we manage to completely de-carbonise our society in the next few years, some of the effects of temperature increases, water availability and stormyness will be significant for aviation which was described as an industry "most sensitive to climate".

Some examples include:

• A number of airports worldwide are located at, or close to, sea level. As sea levels rise, runways will become vulnerable to flooding and other impacts.
• As temperatures increase, aircraft generally require longer to reach the right amount of lift and take off - therefore some runways will need to be legthened as the average temperature in their location rises.
• As air currents change and more storms arise, flight routings will also have to alter to reflect the new conditions.
• Travel patterns will also change, as different parts of the world become more desirable holiday destinations at different times of the year than at present.

These are just a few of the ways in which our industry could be impacted by the changing climate. It is imperative that we start preparing for this. While society must try to limit the extent to which our activities contribute to climate change (and therefore limit the severity of that change), it is now apparent that in around the next 30 years we will start seeing some fairly clear changes. It is how we plan and react to these that will determine standards of living for large parts of society and the viability of many of our activities.

- Image by Flickr user KStills

Science is improving our understanding of climate effects all the time, which should enable politicians to make better-informed decisions, and engineers to find more effective solutions on ways to mitigate the human impact on climate change.

In my field of air traffic management, we have been concerned with a potential side effect of the European emissions trading scheme whereby airlines were going to be told to fly in ways which minimise contrails and cirrus cloud. As you know, aviation’s impact on climate change comes not just from carbon dioxide, but also from other emissions and possibly from the contrails you sometimes see in the sky following aircraft. Contrails mostly consist of simple water vapour and only form when certain atmospheric conditions create the right situation. These contrails can either just evaporate, or sometimes they spread out to create high-level cirrus cloud. Here is a montage from Flickr user fdecomite showing the ‘evolution of a contrail’:

The precise effect of these other elements is unknown and science is attempting continually to get to the bottom of it – often with the help of aviation industry partners such as airlines which carry atmospheric monitoring equipment. Unfortunately that has not stopped certain politicians who ‘have it in’ for aviation calling for airlines to be punished for these little-understood effects. 

As far as air traffic management is concerned, the prospect of having to re-route aircraft around these contrail-forming atmospheric conditions is one we considered with dread. Quite apart from the safety and airspace capacity implications, the unintended consequences (see previous blog posts) would have been considerable. Noise, visual intrusion, and fuel burn would all have increased.

Fortunately the majority of politicians, once this was explained to them, understood and the requirement was dropped. But this episode shows that people are still prepared to make bad decisions based on scant evidence. Decisions based on shaky predictions are sometimes fairly bad decisions. The precautionary principle is an important one and should certainly be taken into account. It is why aviation supports measures to reduce overall man-made climate change impacts. But the measures taken should be based on the best science available, and if the risk of adverse impacts outweighs the potential gains, then we should be very careful indeed. It is a point that we must hope the decision-makers in Copenhagen later this year understand.

- Top image by Flickr user Jenscrabbe

An interesting piece of news in the New York Times yesterday about Sapphire Energy, the supplier of algae-based biojet to the recent flight trials by Japan Airlines and Continental Airlines. Sapphire says that it has revised its forecast on the amount of fuel that it will be producing from algae. By 2011, it will produce 1 million gallons. By 2018, that will rise to 100 million gallons and by 2025 they will be producing more than a billion gallons of fuel derived from algae. Now, this will not just be jet fuel - they are also looking at ground vehicle fuels - but this is a very positive announcement.

Last year, the aviation industry used some 70 billion gallons of Jet A-1 fuel. If just one company can produce 1 billion gallons of sustainable biofuel by 2025, imagine what will happen when the market really starts to open up for biofuel suppliers!

Another story has got me a bit mad. The Guardian today reports that the UK's only wind turbine production facility will close down, as there is not enough demand for wind turbines in the UK at the moment due, in part, to red-tape stopping wind farms being built. I am appalled on two levels:

1. Why is the UK government not doing everything it can to push for renewable energy sources to be brought online as soon as possible? Power generation accounts for over 30% of the world's carbon dioxide emissions and with this news, we are throwing away a chance to reduce that number. At least the power generation sector has the option to almost totally decarbonise its production of electricity - the aviation sector doesn't have that option just yet (although the massive amount of work we are doing will help us reduce our 2% of global emissions significantly).
2. Also, where is the green lobby? Why are they not protesting at this news? Why are they not climbing on the Houses of Parliament, or throwing deserts at politicians, like they have about aviation which is a much smaller part of the climate change problem and which has a huge range of emissions-reduction efforts underway? Is it not a high-profile enough target for them?

By losing this UK-based wind turbine production facility, a substantial opportunity to retain green jobs will be lost. Hardly a good sign of the ability to recover from the recession through green technology, is it?

Image by Flickr user Snapperz

Kevin Dobby, International  Aviation Adviser, acted as biofuels rapporteur for Day 1 of the Aviation and Environment Summit. He concluded that the biofuels technology works and that the drop-in model is the right one. However, there remain questions that need to be answered, such as standards for sustainability, as well as other economic factors. For his complete presentation, see the video below.

Kurt Schaad, Executive Producer for Swiss National Television, was the rapporteur for driving aviation efficiency. He explained that new initiatives are pushing 'out of the box', although numerous challenges remain in the areas of technology, operations and infrastructure. Schaad concluded by reminding us that 'all discussions need global solutions.' Click on the video to view his presentation.

Willie Walsh, Chief Executive Officer of British Airways, believes that the industry has to continue funding environmental research, despite concerns that losses and weak forecasts might result in airlines cutting back their environmental programmes.