As we head towards the weekend, I have seen a couple of video clips that might be of interest. First, Ayesha Durgahee from CNN reports on ways some airlines are reducing their carbon emissions.

And my old colleagues at Auckland Airport in New Zealand have produced this video overview of their sustainability programme.

Next week, I will be blogging live from the ICAO Environment Colloquium - a gathering of world government civil aviation authorities in Montreal to discuss aviation and the environment. Have a great weekend!

Actually, they aren’t going to exactly remove the cars from the road, but they will be taking the equivalent of 48,000 car’s carbon emissions out of the atmosphere with a new scheme announced today. They are going to be producing their own biofuel. Out of waste that would otherwise have been put into landfill.

British Airways have teamed up with US-based Solena Group to build a sustainable jet-fuel plant that can convert a variety of waste materials, normally destined for landfill, into aviation fuel. The plant will probably be located in east London and BA say that when it is fully up-and-running, it will be able to convert 500,000 tonnes of waste per year into 16 million gallons of green jet fuel through a process that offers lifecycle greenhouse gas savings of up to 95 per cent compared to traditional jet fuel.

What kind of waste? Well, almost anything organic (i.e. made of carbon) can be used – food waste from household kitchens or hotels and restaurants, industrial waste from food manufacturing plants, paper that can’t be recycled and agricultural waste.

“This volume of fuel would be more than twice the amount required to make all of British Airways' flights at nearby London City Airport carbon-neutral. Put another way, the fuel's reduction in carbon emissions would be the equivalent of taking 48,000 cars off the road per year.”

They plan to have part of their fleet running on this new fuel from 2014. It is a great vote of confidence from an airline to actually invest in this type of scheme and it comes a short while after KLM announced its new venture in the sustainable biofuel area. A good friend of ours, Jonathan Counsell who is Head of Environment at BA spoke to Sky News a short time ago:

But wait, there’s more

The reduction in carbon lifecycle emissions for the aircraft that use this fuel is not the only benefit. As BA said in their press release:

• The plant will emit oxygen, plus small quantities of nitrogen, argon, steam (water vapour), and CO2. The plant itself will be CO2 neutral.
• The left over gas can be used to produce 20MW of excess electricity for export to the national grid or converted into steam to be used in a district heating system.
• The only solid waste product is an inert vitrified slag material, which can be used as an alternative to aggregates used in construction.
• Through reducing landfill by around 500,000 tonnes per year, local authorities will save £36 million in landfill.
• Four sites in the east of London are among those under consideration for the construction of the bio-jet fuel plant.  The scheme will lead to the creation of up to 1,200 jobs in the area and could reduce significantly local authority landfill tax bills.

- Image by Flickr user caribb

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!

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.

GreenairOnline this week has an interesting feature interview with British Airways’ new head of environment, Jonathan Counsell who provides details of BA’s new corporate responsibility project, One Destination. BA has set itself a goal of reducing emissions by one quarter by 2025 and by half in 2050. As the article says, “the goal is to reduce the number of grams of CO2 per passenger kilometre by 25% from 111g in 2005 to 83g by 2025.” By contrast, the European Commission mandates that new cars should emit no more than 140g of CO2 per kilometre.

BA's new target will enable the airline to reduce its net carbon output from 16 million tonnes in 2005 to eight million by mid-century. This is a significant goal and runs alongside the goals that have been set by IATA (25% more efficient in 2020 compared to 2005), the Air Transport Association of America (30% more efficient in 2025 compared to 2005) and a number of other industry associations and companies.

BA's project is further evidence of the aviation industry's progress towards carbon neutral growth and a carbon free future. Now that's impressive, what do you think?