Flight to the Future

International travel can be massively harmful to the environment. Our future planet looks for more sustainable ways to get about.

Glancing at greenhouse gas emissions, it doesn’t take a genius to work out international travel is a serious offender.

But travel is also one of the most important ways to foster better understanding and a sense of global community. The more widespread global links become, the more previously separate communities and cultures come to understand one another and our responsibility for the planet we inhabit.

And it’s not just about travel in terms of individuals. Moving goods and resources around the planet and international trade are just as important. The International Coalition for Sustainable Aviation reckons ‘aviation’s total human induced climate change impact could represent as much as 15 per cent by 2050 if no measures are taken to reduce these emissions.’

The issues aren’t just related to what’s taking place in the air. International shipping also has massive impacts. Greenwave is an international charity researching ways to reduce emissions from the global fleet of merchant ships.

Remarkably, the charity reckons over 90 per cent of the world’s freight travels by sea. The world fleet of freight ships numbers approximately 90,000 vessels, of which around 60,000 are cargo ships. Sea freight is forecast to grow by 20 per cent in the next 10 years.

Greenwave estimates freight ships burn up to 1.5 tonnes of fuel per hour, saying the global fleet burns around half a billion tonnes of fuel a year. This ‘generates some of the most harmful emissions including carbon dioxide, sulphur oxides and nitrous oxides. Over 1.2bn tonnes of CO2 are emitted from global shipping per year and it is set to rise by 30 per cent by 2020.’

’Over 25m tonnes of nitrous oxides are emitted by ships, much of it around coasts and ports. The harmful particulates in ship emissions have been estimated to cause up to 60,000 premature deaths a year, particularly among those who are prone to respiratory diseases and who inhabit coastal areas and port conurbations.’

Travel in transition

It seems the international community has been slow to act, even in the light of Copenhagen. “In the end COP15 produced no progress whatsoever on bunker emissions or finance; in fact the texts to come out of the meeting do not even mention them.” explains John Maggs, Policy Advisor on Shipping and EU Policy to Seas At Risk, an Association of environmental groups focusing on protection for the marine environment.

“At the start of negotiations to address these emissions at IMO the EU made it clear that if there was no global action taken then it would prepare regional measures of its own.”

“The EU didn't push hard enough for a fair, ambitious and binding agreement in Copenhagen but they have probably done everything that could reasonably be expected of them to get global measures on bunker emissions and they now have a green light for regional measures and in particular the inclusion of emissions from ships visiting EU ports in an EU emissions trading scheme.”

There’s similar discontent in aircraft design. The International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT) examined emissions from more than 25,000 planes produced between 1960 and 2008. It showed improvements in fuel efficiency for the first three decades, but virtually no improvements in the last 20 years when there have been few new aircraft designs.

The International Civil Aviation Organisation recently proposed a CO2 standard for new aircraft designs, but rejected suggestions that designs currently in production should be subjected to a maximum level of emissions. Given ICCT estimates that global CO2 emissions from aircraft grew an estimated 45 per cent between 1992 and 2005, change is needed sooner rather than later.

It also says ICAO recently forecast that global CO2 emissions from aviation will increase an additional 150 per cent above 2006 levels by 2036.

Daniel Rutherford, co author of the ICCT’s report, says the rejection will mean improvements will happen far too slowly. “Conventional wisdom holds that fuel prices drive constant improvements in new aircraft efficiency,” he said.

“But our analysis suggests efficiency improvements only tend to come with the introduction of new designs, which are much less common today.” ICCT is now calling for a carbon dioxide emissions standard for aircraft already in production.

Hope on the horizon

But new work is being done to solve the issues. The Clean Shipping Project is a scheme designed to get the charterers, importer/exporters and the ship owners together to aid more environmentally responsible shipping.

“Our ‘Clean Ship Concept’ is a strategy for uncoupling growth in shipping from environmental harm.” A clean ship ‘is a ship that is constructed and can ultimately be recycled in an environmentally acceptable way, and one that is energy and resource efficient in its daily operation.’

Seas At Risk estimates ‘if all shipping adopted the technologies and practices that are currently being used by the best operators, then the industry would be 90 per cent of the way to implementing a Clean Ship approach.’ This is proof there is a way forward, if industry can be persuaded to take that path.

DK Group offer an underwater air cavity system; Sky Sails offer sail technology. Another company, Ecospec, have come up with the only CO2 and nox scrubbing equipment onboard ships. So technology is moving.

Equally, sustainableaviation.co.uk suggests ‘efforts by engine/aircraft manufacturers have reduced CO2 emissions by 70 per cent per passenger km over past 50 years.’ The Boeing 787 Dreamliner took to the sky for the first time on December 15 2009. Boeing says it uses 20 per cent less fuel than any other airplane of its size. Wiping a fifth of total emissions is more evidence that if manufacturers choose to go green, they can.

The site explains FedEx founder and CEO Fred Smith says the global logistics corporation is aiming to have 30 per cent of its air transportation fuel needs met by second generation biofuels by 2030.

‘At a conference in Washington DC, he called for funding of alternative fuel research be stepped up.’ it reveals. ‘FedEx, the world’s biggest freight carrier, has planned to cut its aviation CO2 emissions by 20 per cent by 2020 through fleet replacement and other initiatives. At the same conference, Lufthansa CEO Wolfgang Mayrhuber said his airline has targeted a 25 per cent cut in CO2 emissions per kilometre flown by 2020.’

Ultimately this is the real issue. Sufficient international will could easily green up travel within a decade. But the muddy financial ground inhabited by major corporations and governments seems to be adding to a lack of transparency over what’s really being done.

More swathing limits on transport emissions as part of emissions trading schemes have the potential to sort all this out in next to no time. Whether this will actually happen is another question.

Resources:

Background document on the Clean Ship Approach Prepared by Norway and the Netherlands
DECLARATION: North Sea Ministerial Meeting on the Environmental Impact of Shipping and Fisheries
Green Wave: Sailing into a Greener Future

International Association of Public Transport (UITP) Reports:
CO2 emissions from passenger transport: Correlation between mobility patterns and CO2 emissions
Release: BOOSTING PUBLIC TRANSPORT: ACTION!
Release: Climate Change: Behaviour Change and Capacity Building Needed

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