Climate Change News
Below are news items on climate change – many with relevance to aviation
Paris to push private jet bans at EU ministers meeting
The French transport minister, Clément Beaune, has said the EU could no longer tolerate people using private jets for their personal convenience and fun, when the public was being asked to make sacrifices in the energy crisis and due to climate change. He said: “Certain types of behaviour are no longer acceptable. We have to act to regulate flights on private jets." Everyone has to make an effort, and the super-rich should not be excluded. Also that companies might be forced to publish regular details on their use of corporate aircraft. Trips on private jets cause the emission of hugely more CO2 even than first class seats on commercial flights. Private jets are used a lot in France, and the mileage increased during Covid. Neither the EU nor France is considering an outright ban on business jets because of their role in the world economy. But it is considering heavy taxation and restrictions on their use in France, especially for short trips where there is a good train service. But the bill is unlikely to be passed by the government. Earlier the French government banned flights on internal trips where the train takes under 2 and a half hours.
Click here to view full story...
Secretary of State approves the DCO for freight airport development at Manston
A Development Consent Order (DCO) for an air freight airport at Manston has been redetermined and granted by the government, again. The DCO application was initially submitted in August 2018 and granted in July 2020 but quashed in February 2021 following a Judicial Review challenge by Ramsgate resident Jenny Dawes. There has been a long saga of this DCO, catalogued on this webpage. Now fresh approval has been issued by Transport Minister, Karl McCartney MP, and the DCO will come into force from September 8th 2022. The order says DfT considers there is a "clear justification" for the development. On carbon, through some dubious arguments, the government does not consider the extra aviation CO2 added due to cargo at Manston to be "material" to the UK's intention to have net zero aviation by 2050. It says it believes the Government’s Transport Decarbonisation Plan and the Jet Zero Strategy, "will ensure Government’s decarbonisation targets for the sector and the legislated carbon budgets can be met without directly limiting aviation demand. [So] he does not accept the Examining Authority’s view that carbon emissions is a matter that should be afforded moderate weight against the Development in the planning balance, and considers that it should instead be given neutral weight at the most."
Click here to view full story...
Immense and implausible increase needed in global carbon capture and storage, to remove aviation etc CO2
The UK has no proper policy to decarbonise aviation. Instead it hopes there will be breakthroughs in aircraft technology and a vast increase in "sustainable" aviation fuels (SAF) which - miraculously - will not compete or conflict with other sectors, or cause other environmental problems. And they are hoping much of the carbon that aviation will continue to emit will be (magically) removed from the air and stored permanently underground (CCS). So far the success of carbon capture plants has been underwhelming. Hardly any carbon has been stored underground. Indeed, even if the global capacity for CCS was expanded very fast (40% per year or so) it is not economic. Unless the expensively captured carbon can be sold to another sector (another industry, greenhouse horticulture, making other fuels) it is not economic. There are estimates that the amount of CO2 that would have to be captured and permanently stored globally would be perhaps x1000 as much as now, just by the 2030s. And the CO2 produced from agriculture, cement making etc - hard to electrify - would be in addition to that from aviation, requiring CCS. In reality, the carbon capture hoped for is not going to happen, certainly not on the scale needed.
Click here to view full story...
AEF RESPONDS TO GOVERNMENT’S ‘JET ZERO’ STRATEGY
In July, the DfT set out its "jet zero" strategy - with the intention of bringing down UK aviation CO2 emissions to "net zero" by 2050, (after allowing an increase) with sub-targets to make domestic flights and airports "net zero" by 2040. Environmental groups are distinctly unimpressed, as the strategy has very low ambition or real measures to cut the CO2. The groups say there should be detailed policy proposals on how the strategy's ambitions will be achieved, with specific policy mechanisms to create incentives for the development and deployment of "zero emission" aircraft and "sustainable aviation fuel" (SAF). There also needs to be a clear decarbonisation pathway to cut emissions by 2035, compared to 2019, not by 2050. It needs to cut air travel demand, which is the only sure way to cut emissions, but the strategy studiously avoids doing that. There should be no airport expansions allowed. And the non-CO2 impacts should be included, which they are not. The AEF considers that the near term policies are too ineffective - just using the UK ETS and more SAF, and the cost of decarbonisation measures should be borne by the aviation industry, not the taxpayer.
Click here to view full story...
How companies like Heathrow may be misguidedly covering farmland in trees, as “carbon offsets”
Many companies are attempting to claim they are "offsetting" their current carbon emissions, by paying for ways in which the carbon can be removed from the atmosphere, or future carbon emissions by others can be prevented. What is actually needed, to prevent an increase in global atmospheric CO2 in the next few years, is NOT to emit the carbon. Hoping it can be removed in future is deeply unsatisfactory. But companies like Heathrow have been buying up "offsets" from planting trees, in the hope that - in 3 or more decades - they will have removed some CO2 from the air. But the problem is that many of these tree planting schemes are buying up existing farmland, or land with other uses, in order to plant these "offset" plantations. Many farmers and those with agricultural land are dismayed and angry. Sometimes other land then has to be used for agriculture, to replace the land taken by offset companies - so little overall benefit. Heathrow said (Feb 2020) it will offset "the remaining 7% of infrastructure emissions through tree-planting projects in Indonesia and Mexico that will be certified through the Verified Carbon Standard." And in 2020 it would "funnel £1.8m of new investment on nature-based carbon capture solutions in the UK. " eg. 87.4 hectares in Ullapool in Scotland, "will benefit from a native woodland creation project part-funded by Heathrow. In partnership with Forest Carbon."
Click here to view full story...
ICCT report shows that only small, very short distance, commuter planes could be electrified any time soon
A recent report by the ICCT (International Council for Clean Transportation) on electric aircraft concludes that electric models will be limited to short range flights (< 500 km) in the foreseeable future. Despite improvements in battery technology in the past three decades, batteries remain inadequate to the task of electrifying most of passenger aircraft. They are just not powerful enough. The energy density of lithium batteries increased 3-fold over the past 30 years, but improvements way greater than that would be needed. The ICCT report looked at the size of battery, the space it would take up, how much power it could provide, and the % of total plane mass. Some key parameters are the "eb" - the amount of energy stored per unit of battery mass), and the "vb", the energy stored per unit volume). eb is measured in watt-hours per kilogram (Wh/kg) and vb is measured in watt-hours per liter (Wh/L). Fossil jet fuel has a specific energy nearly 50 times higher than the best lithium battery. Looking at the 4 categories of plane, commuter, regional, narrowbody, and widebody, only the commuter (up to 19 passengers, up to 450km range - ideally not over 200km) could be electrified. .
Click here to view full story...
Bristol Airport campaigners send video to Canadian teachers over expansion plans
Environmentalists trying to stop the expansion of airports in Bristol, London City and Copenhagen have stepped up their campaign - SOFAX (Stop OTPP Funding Airport Expansion) - with a direct message to the people who ultimately own all those airports - teachers in the Canadian province of Ontario. They have their pensions in the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan - or OTPP. See the video (6mins 30)The campaigns from Bristol, around London City Airport and 3 others around Europe, are directing their campaign at the 329,000 teachers and former teachers who work or worked in state schools in Ontario. They pay money into the OTPP, which years ago bought airports including Bristol and London City, as money-making investments. Both airports are trying to expand, increasing flights and carbon emissions. The new campaign has been organised by the UK’s biggest teachers union - the NEU - along with community and medical campaigners who live around the five airports owned or part-owned by OTPP. SOFAX is appealing to pensioners of OTPP to consider the local health and educational impacts of airports on children, as well as the climate impacts - making life in coming decades more uncertain.
Click here to view full story...
Schiphol airport in Amsterdam limits flights to prevent emissions, in world first
The Dutch government has announced that the number of flights arriving at Schiphol airport will be capped to bring down carbon emissions. Schiphol, the third largest airport in Europe after Heathrow and Charles de Gaulle, will be limited to 440,000 flights a year from 2023. That is an 11% reduction from the airport's pre-pandemic numbers in 2019 - and most importantly, it is a first in terms of putting climate before economic growth. The Dutch government, a majority stakeholder in Schiphol, says the change will bring down both noise and nitrogen oxide pollution (NOx). By limiting air traffic at one of Europe’s major airports the Dutch government is taking a major step to tackle air travel, which is one of the most polluting sectors. The aviation industry is not happy about it, and want instead to persist with the myth of being "net zero by 2050" (which is uncertain, too little, too late). A pro-aviation body ACI Europe "warned against governments caving in to ‘climate populism’." The decision was welcomed by Greenpeace, which has been campaigning to reduce flights at Schiphol for years.
Click here to view full story...
Carbon Brief Analysis: UK’s ‘jet-zero’ plan would allow demand for flying to soar 70% – with higher emissions
In a detailed analysis, Carbon Brief looks at the DfT's "Jet Zero" strategy and how realistic it is for UK aviation to continue to expand, based on future technologies. Under the strategy’s plans, the UK aviation sector will not reach net-zero by 2050, but instead will still be emitting 19m tonnes of CO2 equivalent (MtCO2e). It plans for aviation emissions rising from 38MtCO2e in 2019, to 52MtCO2e by 2050. A range of speculative tech brings the 52 down to 19MtCO2e. For the UK to reach its legal net-zero target, these emissions will need to be removed from the atmosphere. The plans will also see passenger numbers increase by 70% from 2021 to 2050, representing an additional 200 million passengers. The government has no intention of reducing air travel demand - contrary to the advice of the CCC. In its “high-ambition” scenario, the use of "sustainable aviation fuels" (SAF) in UK flights would reach 10% of overall fuel use by 2030 and 50% by 2050. The CCC has said this reliance is a major risk. SAF is currently barely used because, as the government acknowledges, they are expensive and their production relies on technology that is “yet to be proven at scale”.
Click here to view full story...
Environmental Audit Cttee calls for rapid implementation of key environmental principles in policymaking across Government
The Environmental Audit Committee (EAC) argues that there is no reason for any further delay to the roll-out of the Government’s Environmental Principles, (integration, prevention, rectification at source, polluter pays and precautionary principles) which are intended to be binding on policymakers across many areas of central government. Including aviation. The Government has been designing its environmental principles for over four years. Now that the requirement on policymakers to observe environmental principles has been enacted in the Environment Act 2021, there is concern that further delay in implementation will risk principles being sidestepped by Whitehall rather than embraced. The EAC is calling for rapid finalisation and implementation of the policy statement presented to Parliament in May 2022. The Government must deliver on its ambition for the policy statement to be finalised and embedded across government policymaking, by autumn of 2022. The UK was previously obliged to follow environmental principles in the EU Treaties, and is still bound by a number of international agreements on environmental protection. Brexit offered a significant opportunity to shape the implementation of environmental principles to domestic circumstances.