“Aviation is the big ‘elephant in the room’ when it comes to emissions”, says CAGNE. “We do not seek to demonise those that fly, and less than half the UK population actually fly, but we seek to educate and change attitudes the same way that attitudes have changed towards recycling and food waste.”
Pledge to Fly Less seeks to educate the flyer to what flying means for the planet. Reducing the number of times you fly is currently the only way to reduce emissions on a large scale and, in so doing, reduce global warming.
In 2022/3 we saw the new owners of Gatwick Airport return with expansion plans by ‘stealth’ as they seek to use the emergency runway as a second runway. This will significantly increase the issues this airport is creating for future generations and negating the efforts that other industries are doing to tackle climate change.
The Gatwick master plan points to an increase in the airport’s emissions from 0.77million tons of CO2 in 2017 to 0.95 million tons of CO2 in 2028, but this assessment is limited in both scope and duration: the analysis shows the emissions that Gatwick is directly responsible for (such as fuel used by vehicles at the airport, and the electricity purchased), as well as indirect emissions from passenger journeys to and from the airport and staff commuting. Aircraft emissions are also included in this calculation, but crucially, only for the landing and take-off cycle, capturing the flight’s emissions below an altitude of 3,000 feet only. The emergency runway would increase passenger throughput of 70mppa, which would equate to 3.63 million tonnes of CO2 in 2050, an increase of nearly 1million tonnes of CO2, not accounting for the harmful effects of flying that are non-CO2-related: engine NOx, contrails developing into cirrus cloud, water vapour, soot/black carbon… they actually dominate aviation’s effect on climate.
Aviation now accounts for 2.4% of global CO2 emissions and 3.5% of all anthropogenic (human-caused) global warming. What many people aren’t aware of, however, are the harmful effects of flying that are non-CO2-related: engine NOx, contrails developing into cirrus cloud, water vapour, soot/black carbon; these factors actually dominate aviation’s effect on climate.
According to Transport and Environment in September 2020, 21 top aviation climate scientists concluded that flying warms the planet three times more than just aviation-related CO2 emissions alone, so carbon footprints must be multiplied by three to reflect this. There is, indeed, no quicker way to fry the planet than by flying. [i]
The government is supportive of aviation growth using ‘Beyond the Horizon’ document; the government is allowing airports to grow by ‘making best use of current facilities’.
The Jet Zero Council (JZC) is a partnership between industry and government to bring together ministers and chief executive officer-level stakeholders to drive the ambitious delivery of new technologies and innovative ways to cut aviation emissions. Members are airports, airlines, manufacturers and AEF.
The government has announced investment of taxpayers’ money into alternative fuels and carbon capture.
The emissions from each airport are not necessarily added to the overall emissions of this country, so the total emissions that need to be reduced worldwide is increasing.
Local authorities may have signed up to climate change action but many continue to ignore the emissions from airports and support unconditional growth of local airports, seeing short-term economic growth over long-term stability for local economies by supporting green initiatives and sustainability for future generations.
The departure and arrival phases of every flight are the most polluting, as each aircraft produces maximum emissions whilst burning fossil fuel. There is no current alternative fuel, seemingly no single bullet that will facilitate the anticipated growth in aviation far beyond other industries. This is why restricting the number of flights must be an option to reduce global warming.
Production of aviation biofuel will likely need to be in conjunction with carbon capture and storage (CCS), to be competitive with other uses for biomass (e.g. in industry, electricity generation, or hydrogen production). We see this as non-sustainable, as many industries look to the same medium to replace conventional fuels, creating yet another drain on the production of alternative fuels.
Key national aviation points are overlooked, as aviation is one of the most energy- and carbon-intensive forms of transport per passenger, whether measured per km or per hour travelling.
With no reduction in the number of planes, this counters any saving through new design of planes to reduce CO2 or the modernisation of airspace, which the government supports and has implemented as it seeks to increase the number of planes flown for resilience and fewer delays for the consumer, a privileged sector that flies a lot.
Other reports state that carbon trading, offered by ICAO and aviation, is the answer to allow growth – the planting of trees in other countries. This is simply a marketing tool to facilitate unconditional growth.
“As a rule of thumb, we would have to currently adopt 15 trees per tonne as a conservative estimate, though this may vary from 10 to 15 depending on the site, terrain and rainfall.”
Frequent flyers represent just 1% of the world’s population, causing half of aviation’s carbon emissions in 2018, according to a study.
Airlines produced a billion tonnes of CO2 and benefited from a $100bn (£75bn) subsidy by not paying for the climate damage they caused, the researchers estimated.
Only 11% of the world’s population took a flight in 2018, and only 4% flew abroad. US air passengers have by far the biggest carbon footprint among rich countries. Its aviation emissions are bigger than the next 10 countries combined, including the UK, Japan, Germany and Australia, the study reports.
The researchers said the study showed that an elite group enjoying frequent flights had a big impact on the climate crisis, that affected everyone.
The Climate Change Committee report – Published on May 2nd, from the Committee on Climate Change (CCC), the Government’s official advisers, recommends that the UK become ‘net-zero’ carbon by 2050. This does not mean there will be no CO2 emissions: “the CCC target is for ‘net zero’ because some activities, such as flying and farming, will unavoidably produce some emissions in 2050. But these will be balanced by taking carbon out of the air by growing trees or burying CO2 under the ground”.
The 2022 update from the CCC on the Government’s Jet Zero report adds the following –
The Committee recognises that, because aviation is likely to be largely dependent on kerosene for some decades to come, it will not be able to decarbonise in the way most other sectors will. But it does expect that the cost of flying will need to rise if aviation is to reduce its emissions.
The CCC report commented that, ‘the governments figures are – in our view – very much at the speculative end of government and industry forecasts for the potential for technological improvements. While significant tree planting is required for emissions removal, the aviation sector should not rely on afforestation to remove its emissions given the limited scope that this offers for long term emissions removals at the required scale.’
Aviation technology is simply not keeping pace, not reducing the impact it is having on our planet, and so it would seem the only way to reduce noise and emissions is for the residents of the UK to reduce how often we fly – so please, pledge to “FLY LESS’.
Aviation Environment Federation – www.aef.org.uk
Transport and Environment – www.transportenvironment.org
CCC Monitoring Framework