Flying the cleanly skies?

For years, airline companies have worked to increase fuel efficiency (and coincidentally reduce CO2 emissions) to counter the skyrocketing price of kerosene. New aircraft, such as Boeing's 787 Dreamliner due out in the summer of 2008, will be made of lighter composite materials and employ other fuel-saving measures. But these improvements won't be nearly enough to offset the predicted increase in demand for air travel (including air freight).

Other fuel-saving suggestions include pulling planes from the gate to the runway with their engines only idling, reducing the fuel used to taxi into position for takeoff.

Modernized air-traffic control systems could reduce the number of planes circling airports waiting to land or take off, says John Meenan, executive vice president of the Air Transport Association of America, which represents the nation's airlines. Commercial airliners today follow ground beacons to their destinations that result in indirect and inefficient zigzag routes, Mr. Meenan says. A new air traffic management system could yield a 12 to 15 percent improvement in environmental performance.

"It's a matter of making the investment to make that happen," he says.

In the long term, biofuels, possibly ethanol made from switch grass or biowaste, could provide an alternative. But no one knows when that could happen. "One of the realities we're dealing with in aviation is that there are no alternatives" to CO2-emitting kerosene fuels, Meenan says.

The European Union has proposed incorporating aviation into its carbon-emissions trading plan by 2011, a so-called "cap and trade" scheme. That would allow airlines to "buy" the right to emit carbon from other industries, such as power generation, which could sell carbon credits if they reduced their emissions below their cap.

People aren't going to give up airline travel easily. For long-distance travel, there's really no practical replacement. "We think the free movement of people and goods is a pretty fundamental right," says Graham Lancaster, a spokesman for Britain's Federation of Tour Operators.

The effect of a drastic reduction of airline flights on the world economy would be significant. Aviation drives about 9 percent of world GDP, Meenan says.

"The countries that would be hit hardest would be developing countries, because they're more dependent on tourism," says Justin Francis, CEO of responsibletravel.com, an online travel agency specializing in ecotourism based in Brighton, England. In half of the developing countries, tourism is one of the top three industries, he says.

"My view is that we must fly less," Mr. Francis says, adding that the ecoconscious might decide to take only one big vacation flight each year and take shorter nonflying vacations the rest of the year. Hopping around Europe every few weeks on the low-cost airlines that have sprung up in recent years would have to end, he says.

"The world is coming to realize the biggest threat we face is carbon emissions," Francis says. "Governments are under pressure to take action. One of the places they will look is the airline industry because it is such a rapidly growing source of emissions."

Page: 1 | 2