Plane sensible

Don’t shun the aviation industry, argues Entec’s Louise Pritchard: help the sector get to grips with its carbon issues.

Flying has, to say the least, an image problem. Aviation has become an easy target for environmentalists. Plane Stupid activists scaled Parliament in February, to protest against a third runway. Climate Camp set up shop just outside Heathrow last year. Even mainstream greens have called into question the whole point of offsetting flights.

You’d think this would be enough to scare off an environmental consultancy from working with the industry. But Entec is helping both airlines and airports in the UK to reduce their impact as well as improve their image. “We discovered there was an appetite and they’re very keen to do their bit,” says Entec senior consultant Louise Pritchard, who recently held a series of seminars for the industry to determine the way forward. “We’re trying to help them understand what they can do and how best to respond.”

Part of the problem, she explains, is that aviation finds itself in a double bind. It is being taxed – via passengers, if not fuel – to undo environmental damage, and it should also be included in the European Emission Trading Scheme by 2012 (pending an EU decision) – but it is still seen as the arch villain on climate change. Entec’s recommendation is to take a holistic approach, where carbon emissions are tackled through energy management as well as offsetting and trading. What’s essential, Pritchard says, is clear visibility and dialogue with pressure groups.

For an example of this in action, she points to the environmental labelling scheme that Entec worked on with the budget airline FlyBe. “It’s similar to those you’d get on fridges and washing machines, to show how their aircraft perform across a range of measures. It includes the global impacts through carbon dioxide emissions, but also the impacts around the airport, through local air quality and noise. The idea is to look more broadly than just climate change.”

While not actually reducing emissions, this initiative – the first of its kind in the aviation industry – was praised by the House of Commons Transport Select Committee, which encouraged all airlines to follow suit. Despite its positioning on FlyBe’s website, Entec doubts that it would influence a mainstream consumer choosing their flight – because they need to get from A to B on whichever of FlyBe’s planes fly that route. What it does do, says Pritchard, is help the consumer understand the impact of their flight – and, more importantly, it also encourages the airline to keep choosing planes with lower environmental impacts.

Pritchard thinks the aviation industry is being given a rough ride in comparison with other transport sectors. While the rise of short breaks has helped paint a picture of flying as an unnecessary ‘luxury’, she says, aviation is only a relatively small contributor to CO2 emissions – about half that of shipping worldwide, for instance. At the UK level, 23% of carbon dioxide emissions come from domestic transport, of which only 1.6% is from domestic flights – although international flights from the UK do bring that figure up to 6.4%. The much-discussed additional radiative forcing effect of emissions at altitude complicates this picture, of course, but planes are not alone in having other non-CO2 effects on climate change.

Entec is also educating airports on how best to respond to the opponents of expansion. “One of the confusions surrounding expansion is that people don’t twig that the increase in emissions is down to the airlines, rather than the airport,” says Pritchard. “But they are covered separately in emissions trading. So we’re looking at what the airport can do, how it can influence its airlines, and its passengers – by encouraging them to use public transport and minimising car drop-offs and waits.” The consultancy is giving airports advice on everything from greener design, incorporating renewables and better energy management, to how to play up the positives, such as the economic contribution that their infrastructure makes.

Entec makes no bones about it: we won’t see air travel reducing significantly in the near future – and let’s face it, many of us find it hard to kick the flying habit entirely. Instead, it believes global carbon management schemes are the best way to reduce the industry’s impact – as well as improve its image. – Iain Aitch

Entec UK is a Forum for the Future partner.

13 October 2008

Iain Aitch