The Myth of Green Travel

Last year, 55% of my carbon emissions came from travelling on airplanes.

In the US and UK, air travel accounts for 5% of our nations’ overall carbon footprints. 2% worldwide. The US airline industry uses 20 billion gallons of gasoline a year, accounting for 15% of our nation’s gas needs. World air travel continues to grow at impressive rates.

I love to travel. Experiencing new places while sampling bits of their culture and history inspires me. I feel a broader connection to the world, and a better understanding of my place in it.

But is energy-efficient travel an impossibility? Is ‘eco-tourism’ a misnomer because it simply costs too much in energy and carbon to arrive at your destination?

How bad are the emissions from air travel, really?

Bad. A full 747 gets about 70 passenger miles per gallon, burning 3378 gallons of fuel per hour. If you think about it, that’s not much better than driving your Prius thousands of miles to your far-off destination (Though to be fair, you get there a lot faster). All of the gas used makes air travel increasingly expensive. Fare prices are staying the same, but as oil prices rise, nearly all airlines are slipping in large fuel surcharges.

On top of that, because you are in the sky, the carbon emissions from burning the fuel are spit directly into the high atmosphere, minimizing the chance they’ll be absorbed by a plant or a rock on their way up. "IPCC scientists have estimated that greenhouse gas pollution from high-flying jets is up to four times more damaging to the environment than identical levels of pollution emitted at ground level."

How is government and industry working to improve?

The situation isn’t going to improve quickly. Unlike road vehicles, currently there are no greenhouse gas emissions controls on aircraft. Even the Kyoto Protocol doesn’t cover airline emissions. And given the insane competitiveness and perennial instability of the US air industry, volunteers for costly improvements are difficult to come across.

Despite stiff resistance from the Bush administration, California has recently teamed up with the EU to lobby the US EPA for emissions standards, but they face an uphill battle. Airlines have talked about making zero-emissions a goal, but few have pursued concrete steps in this direction.

Certainly high gas prices are a great motivator for airlines to improve their fuel efficiency, and as a result, Boeing and Airbus have committed to improve the efficiency of the aircraft they manufacture in the next decade, Boeing by 20% and Airbus by 50%.

Is there new technology on the horizon that can help?

The major airplane manufacturers are always working on new designs for their craft to make them lighter and more aero-dynamic, resulting in more fuel-efficient planes.

Can progress be made beyond that? EasyJet thinks so. They have laid out a series of tough expectations for an “EcoJet”, that if produced, will comprise their entire fleet of aircraft in 2015. Elsewhere, experiments in solar-powered aircraft have been reasonably successful for small craft, though much more research is needed. Several prizes are available in the market to people who can solve various aeronautical energy challenges.

Presently, the most promising developments lie in new fuel technologies. Richard Branson’s Virgin Atlantic has been at the forefront of green developments in travel. In fact, they will be the first ever to test fly a 747 powered solely on bio fuels next month. They hope to implement green fuel standards into their passenger flights later this year.

Green fuel is certainly an improvement, because some of the carbon of the fuel gets eaten as the plants are grown, but it still produces harmful high-altitude emissions. Still, this new fuel source in combinations with fuel-efficient improvements could go a long way towards making air travel a more efficient way to travel long distances.

The Sudden Rise of Offset Programs

An increasingly common strategy for airlines is to put the responsibility of carbon emissions into the hands of its consumers. Several airlines, including Delta and British Airways, have online and airport Carbon Offset programs available for purchase.

Al Gore, and popular conferences like this year’s CES in Las Vegas, are able to claim that they are “carbon-neutral” because they purchase offsets to ‘balance’ out their carbon footprint.

For those of you not familiar with the concept, when you purchase an offset, your money theoretically goes to a clean energy project somewhere around the world that will prevent/remove that same amount of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Many people purchase offsets to vacation with clear consciences.

The price of offsets varies wildly. Offsetting a round trip from San Francisco to New York will cost anywhere from $15 to $80.

Unfortunately, the validity and effectiveness of offset programs remains dubious. There are no certifications for offset sellers to prove that they are improving carbon footprints in any real way. Carbon credit markets are still nascent enough that the net impact of said programs is difficult to measure.

Bottom line: offsets are a lazy way of being green. Think about it: you pay money to some other company that will develop a program to help convince you to reduce your carbon footprint. Why not just reduce it in the first place?

Steps to take to reduce your travel footprint:

1. Fly Less. This is really the bottom line. If you fly for business, try convincing your boss to install new video conferencing software instead as a cost-reduction measure. If you fly for pleasure, consider whether you can cut back on the number of annual trips you make a year. You don’t need the hassle of airport security after all. Or, consider buses and trains. Trains can be really fun, and have a much higher passenger MPG than aircraft.

2. Fly closer. Limiting your personal mileage when you fly can make as much of an impact as limiting your overall trips. If you live in San Francisco and have the choice to vacation in Disneyland or Disneyworld, choose Disneyland.

3. Fly direct. More fuel is used on take-off and landing than during cruising, so opt to pay a little more for a direct flight. Not only are direct flights more convenient, but purchasing more of them should bring the overall direct fare to that destination down in the long run, as airlines balance for the increased demand.

4. Combine Work and Play. If you’re already there for work, why not stay a while longer and see the sights?

5. Travel on airlines with clear environmental goals. In the US, Continental has made the most strides to embrace a higher standard. Overseas, Virgin is the clear winner, but EasyJet, KLM, and Lufthansa have made impressive advances as well.

6. Research your carbon offset provider. If you want to do all you can, you’re probably going to offset your travel. It’s better than nothing. Still, try to make sure your offset provider engages in legitimate offsetting activities. Clean Air Cool Planet has a good survey from a year ago that evaluates some offsetting companies. Do your research. If you can’t find any credible information online on what that offset provider is doing, it’s probably not a good sign.

Happy Traveling!

Comments

[Bernardo]

Airplanes are ALREADY designed to be as fuel efficient as possible, and have been for over 70 years. Since long before environmentalists were around, the key number that sold (or doomed) an airliner is passenger miles per gallon. I'm glad that this article (unlike many other rants I have read about airliner emissions) admits that, while airliners do release tons of CO2, that's because they carry hundreds of people thousands of miles, and there isn't really a more fuel-efficient way to go that far. If there were, that's probably what the airlines would use! (One day I will calculate how much CO2 a person exhales by walking or biking or horse-riding thousands of miles... Ok, it will be less than what they emit by being transported by a Prius or 747, but still, to go somewhere, you have to burn energy, and to go thousands of miles, you're gonna release a lot of C02 one way or another).

Airplanes will start using biofuels sooner or later, since oil prices one day will rise above the cost of making that fuel from plant matter. At least that means the CO2 they put into the atmosphere was removed from the atmosphere earlier when the fuel was made. More and more light airplanes are diesel-powered. The USAF has a B-52 at Edwards that flies on a synthetic fuel blend (C-17s will be next), and wants all its jets to be certified to fly with such fuels by 2011, and half its fuel demands to be met with synthetic fuel by 2016:

http://www.technologynewsdaily.com/node/7692

http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1228/p03s05-usgn.html

As for solar-powered airplanes, you would need DRASTIC improvements in the power-to-weight ratio of solar panels, batteries, fuel cells, and electric motors, before a solar airplane could carry a significant payload (i.e more than a couple of people), go faster than human running speed, and be built strongly enough to not come apart at the slightest gust of wind, which is what happened to NASA's Helios;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helios_Prototype

But yeah, an airplane with an effectively unlimited range and no need to be refueled would be pretty awesome. Sometimes I fantasize about having something like a Helios as my personal airplane... then I remember it would take weeks to fly anywhere.