Is it OK to fly?

How could planes be less damaging? We're still flying even though we know it's bad.

Leo Hickman on whether we should be cutting back

Saturday May 20, 2006

Just to repeat, then: this plane has the lowest fuel consumption per passenger of any large commercial airliner yet built. It requires less than three litres of fuel per passenger per 100km travelled, making it more fuel-efficient than even the latest hybrid cars. It also creates half the departure noise of its rival Boeing 747-400 while carrying 35% more passengers - up to 555 in a traditional three-class configuration, or a rather unsettling 853 passengers if everyone squeezes into economy.

But while the aviation industry is applauding itself for heralding such a technological advance, it is unlikely to dampen the increasing angst here in the UK about the environmental damage caused by our addiction to flying. To many, the sight of this 420-tonne aircraft (and that's without the passengers) is a further symbol of aviation's disproportionate abuse of the very atmosphere it uses as its own private expressway. Given that even the industry itself is predicting that global passenger numbers could triple by 2050, incremental increases in fuel efficiency such as those offered by the latest generation of planes - Boeing boasts that its new 787 "Dreamliner" is the "environmentally preferred" option for any would-be purchaser - seem about as useful a solution as stuffing a finger in a breached dyke.

I am desperate for some good news about aviation and its environmental impact. Please someone say that they got the figures wrong. I have always loved the freedom and access flying brings - who doesn't? - but in recent years have descended into a near-permanent depression about how to square this urge with the role of at least trying to be a responsible citizen of the planet. Travel is one of life's pleasures, but is my future - and, more importantly, that of my two young daughters - really going to be one of abstinence from flying, or at best flying by quota, as many environmentalists are now calling for?

I recently travelled to a conference hall adjacent to Geneva airport to attend the second Aviation and Environment Summit in search of, if not answers, then at least a better indication of just how damaging flying really is to the environment. (The irony was not lost that hundreds of people had flown from around the world to attend.) Given public concern about aviation's impact on climate change, the industry met to thrash out, first, how to counter this charge and, second, how to decrease its trinity of environmental damage - noise, ground-level airport pollution, but most significantly CO2 emissions. That it seems to want to do things in that order was one of the most telling things I took away from my two days with an industry that was described by one delegate as "public enemy number one".

Speaker after speaker bemoaned how the public - particularly, and some said uniquely, that of the UK (there was laughter in the room when someone projected a quote from George Monbiot's recent "flying kills, we all know it" column for this paper) - had somehow misunderstood the aviation industry. After all, they claimed, it had made huge efforts to increase the efficiency of its fleet, by lowering weight, improving aerodynamics, fine-tuning engines and a range of other measures. No need to be green-minded: the rocketing cost of kerosene alone is enough to drive these improvements.

Myth after myth was slain: that aviation does not pay tax on fuel; that growth is not sustainable; that air transport was excluded from the Kyoto protocol - although mostly by a clever dance of words and numbers. But one "myth" irked the room more than any other: that aviation is a huge and disproportionate polluter. Although the figures seemed to vary, the general consensus was that aviation currently contributes about 4% of global CO2 emissions (no one raised the issue of "radiative forcing" which means that contrails left at 30,000ft act to further magnify a plane's climate change impact). Let's get this in perspective, said repeated speakers: this is small fry compared with cars, factories, even homes. Why are we being singled out, they cried? Aviation actually provides a net gain: it alone generates 8% of global GDP. Why not, they said, chase after other industries that could easily make efficiency savings instead of picking on an industry that gives so much to the world, yet is currently so economically fragile?

This response was, it has to be said, fairly predictable. Any multi-billion dollar industry tends to be self-important and resistant to change. But beyond this superficially persuasive patter, there were moments of absolute clarity, none of which, I'm sorry to report, acted to reassure me that we might have, after all, got the impact of aviation out of all proportion.

A French air traffic controller drew some sharp intakes of breath from the audience by showing a real-time sequence of all the planes flying over France at one moment. The screen was a tangle of lines. He commented that every single day 2.5m people now fly through the airspace directly over metropolitan Paris - equivalent to about a quarter of its population. Similarly, a representative from the US Federal Aviation Administration showed an extraordinary map of current flightpaths etched over one another on the world's surface. The only places on Earth that are now not scarred by routes are a triangle of air space over the central Pacific, as well as much of the southern Atlantic and Antarctica.

An aviation fuel expert at Shell dispelled any real hope that a paradigm shift is within reach whereby planes will no longer be powered by highly polluting kerosene but instead by a much cleaner alternative. Liquid hydrogen is pure fantasy, he said, for at least another 50 years. And forget any hope that biofuels, as is the hope with cars, could come to the rescue. Ethanol, he said, is a poor performer as an aviation fuel.

Currently, the only real alternative is "synthetic" kerosene made not from oil but natural gas, biogas or coal. It has the major advantage of working within current aircraft and therefore does not need new costly infrastructure. In fact, there are already planes flying in South Africa fuelled on this technology - but made from coal and therefore not offering any significant emissions advantage over kerosene.

The bottom line, he said, is that kerosene will be the preferred fuel for the next 30 years. And hearing Boeing assert that new planes being bought today will have a service life of up to 60 years, it appears that we are now "locked-in" to this technology - and its resultant emissions - for the long-term. (Not exactly good news for Tony Blair who recently said he favoured waiting for a technological solution to reduce aviation's impact.)

Couple that depressing news with the fast-developing taste for flying around the world, particularly in India and China, and it becomes clear that aviation-related emissions are guaranteed to soar in the next few decades. Tweaks here and there in efficiency savings are going to be rendered virtually insignificant by increased demand. In Europe, demand is growing 5% a year on average, whereas in China it stands this year at 14% and India at 15%, albeit from a smaller base. But India, fast attempting to play catch-up with the West, is currently spending $12bn on airport building. Its airlines have 330 new aircraft on order, largely driven by its booming new low-cost sector - its current civil fleet numbers just 200. And by 2020 India's minister for aviation is predicting that up to 2,000 planes could be operating. China, meanwhile, says it plans to buy 100 new planes every year over the next five years to increase its current fleet of 863 aircraft. Since 2000, passenger numbers have doubled in China. To put all this growth in perspective, there are about 12,000 civil aircraft presently flying in the world.

It seems, therefore, that we, as a nation that avidly consumes cheap flights, do indeed face a choice. Do we continue to take our minibreaks, visit our second homes, holiday on the other side of the world and partake in all the other forms of what the industry describes as "non-essential" travel? Or do we start to ration this habit, even if others elsewhere in the world quite understandably will be quick to take our place on the plane?

My view is that flying will simply have to become more expensive - be it through ever higher fuel costs, direct taxation, or as a result of emissions trading (which seems the most likely abatement strategy in the short-term as the airlines appear resigned to this fate). Only by becoming more expensive will ticket prices start to better reflect flying's environmental impact - the polluter should always pay, after all - and therefore drive down demand. It's easy to forget how good we've had it in this heady era of low-cost carriers: the average cost of an international air ticket in the UK fell from £270 in 1994 to £155 in 2004. But surely the good times must end.

I simply don't buy the argument put forward by the airlines that this is undemocratic because it will make flying an elitist activity once again. Most of the evidence shows that the majority of new demand in the UK is simply the same people flying more. There will, of course, be some who voluntarily choose to fly less, or not at all, in order to "do their bit" which is highly admirable, but a step-change reduction in emissions is only possible by driving people out of the planes, whatever the mechanism.

Equally, carbon neutralising our flights is a nice, cuddly idea that on the surface is a positive action to take, but ultimately planting trees in Scotland or handing out eco-light bulbs in Honduras is no substitute for getting planes out of the skies. It also carries the risk that people will think "job done" and simply carry on flying regardless.

It's unpalatable for sure, but, yes, it seems we really must start flying less. It's handy, then, that we happen to live on an island that is still seen as one of the world's very best tourism destinations.

CO2 emissions

By plane return to Geneva 170kg CO2 in tonnes 10 Average amount of CO2 generated per person per year in the UK 4.76 Heathrow-Sydney return, per passenger 0.37 Heathrow-Malaga return, per passenger (Source: climatecare.org)