How Is Air Travel Carbon Emission Affecting the Environment?
The demand for air travel today has increased manifold. The low cost
of air travel has managed to attract millions of passengers for both
domestic as well as international flights. To meet this growing demand,
airline companies are increasing the number of flights, resulting in
more and more harm to the environment due to excess carbon emission.
Air travel is indeed a major contributor to the climatic change, and as
such, some measures need to be taken up to control the massive amounts
of greenhouse gases emitted by the flights. In UK, in the year 2006, air
travel accounted for 6.4 per cent of the UK’s emissions of carbon
dioxide. This percentage can only go upwards unless a definitive move is
taken up. By the year 2020, the carbon emission from flights will
account for 10% of UK’s total carbon emission, if prevention is not
carried out.
Air New Zealand is enabling passengers to buy carbon credits.
What can be done to reduce the impact of carbon emission on
environment?
To make certain that the impact of air travel is reduced; the
government has decided to include aviation in the next round of the EU
Emissions Trading Scheme. So what is the trading scheme? In this scheme,
each firm is allowed to emit a set amount of carbon. If however the firm
exceeds its limit, it can buy carbon credits from another firm that has
not reached its quota.
There is a huge cost involved in buying carbon credits and consequently,
the added cost that the airline has to incur will give them an incentive
to become more environmentally efficient.
Alternately, if the airlines have to pay higher taxes on short haul
European flights, depending upon the amount of carbon emission, it would
eventually slow down the growth of short haul flights and eventually
decrease the number of flights.
Carbon Offsetting is yet another way in which the
carbon emission from
airlines may be counteracted. Carbon Offsetting is a method by which you
can offset the carbon dioxide that you emit while flying by planting
tress or by installing solar panels, thereby neutering your carbon
contribution. However, this method has often been criticized, as there
are no proper ways in which you can measure your own carbon contribution
to the environment.
Indeed, a number of airline companies have begun to take the position of
global warming seriously and begun to make a serious effort to go green!
Japan Airlines and American Airlines, for instance have begun to take
measures to fly light and results are already showing. American Airlines
estimates that their annual carbon emission has been reduced by 1,14,000
tonnes. In addition, in a revolutionary move, Virgin Atlantic operated
its first flight using bio-fuel in February 2009, while the Boeing
747-400 aircraft flew using this environmentally friendly fuel too! |
