Wednesday28 August 2019 ★ FINANCIAL TIMES 7

FT BIG READ. AVIATION

Spurred on by environmental activists such as Greta Thunberg, there is a growing consumer backlash

against air travel. However, the industry has few easy technological solutions to reduce its emissions.

By Janina Conboye and Leslie Hook

planes that run on a combination of fuel

and battery power.

At this year’s Paris Air Show, Israeli

start-up Eviation unveiled an electric

aircraft taxi called “Alice” that can carry

nine passengers for up to 1,050km.

EasyJet is also confident about these

technologies, which tend to be suitable

for the type of short-haul flights that the

low-cost carrier specialises in. The com-

pany is advising Seattle-based start-up

Wright Electric as it designs an electric

plane that could serve the airline for

flights of less than 500km.

“We know what we think would work

for easyJet, so that’s why we’re looking

at electrification and hybrid,” says Gary

Smith, director of operations transfor-

mation at the carrier. He adds that bio-

fuels are “not going to solve [easyJet’s]

problem”.

Meeting objectives

Budget carriers such asRyanair, easyJet

andWizz Airpoint out that their flights

tend to be some of the most efficient, in

terms of CO2 emissions per passenger

per km, because they have newer fuel-

efficient aircraft, no first class service

and are usually full.

However, the total emissions for the

budget carriers are still high. EU data

this year revealed that Ryanair was

Europe’s tenth biggest polluter in 2018.

The other nine were power plants.

Electric aircraft are not going to be

available anytime soon. Furthermore

the heavy batteries required for electric

aircraft mean that they will not be suita-

ble for long-haul flights.

For these reasons, not everyone in the

industry is enthusiastic about electric

planes. Mr Walsh, of IAG — whose flights

include a relatively large proportion of

long-haul trips — says electric and

hybrid technologies will not be relevant

to the business for another 25-30 years.

Whatever the technological chal-

lenges, industry executives realise that

the passenger focus on airlines’ emis-

sions is only likely to grow.

“There is going to be more awareness

of climate change,” saysJoszef Varadi,

chief executive of Wizz Air, the Hungar-

ian low-cost carrier. He points to the

recent EU parliamentary elections

where Europe’s green parties gained

ground.

Flygskamactivists are also growing

more impatient with an industry which

has set lofty objectives but which does

not yet have the tools to meet them.

Without solutions that can reduce the

climate impact of flying in the immedi-

ate future, they say that people just have

to fly less.

“We are really seeing a growing no-fly

movement, and that is because, even

though there might be some technologi-

cal solution in the long-term horizon, we

really do have to tackle the growth that

is happening right now,” says Lucy Gil-

liam, an aviation and shipping expert at

Transport and Environment, a Brussels

based non-profit group.

“We are seeing that all around, people

are going, ‘oh crikey, aviation is actually

part of my footprint’,” she adds.

“And when they look at things that

they have direct control of, aviation

comes up in the top three things that

you can actually do to reduce your

impact.”

The financial impact of “flight shame”

has so far been limited: global air

travel is still growing healthily, driven

by demand in Asia, particularly China.

But investors are starting to pay

attention — during the latest round of

corporate results in the sector,

environmental issues were among the

most prominent questions for

executives.

Analysts say that if theflyksgam

movement spreads beyond Europe —

or if governments introduce punitive

taxation in response — it could begin

to pose financial risks. Countries such

as Sweden have already seen a drop in

air travel, and an increase in train

travel, because of the movement.

Daniel Röska, analyst at Bernstein,

says there is often a discrepancy

between people’s vocal support for

less pollution, and their willingness to

actually reduce their air travel habits.

But governments could still use

emissions concerns as a pretext to

increase air taxes in the future, he

adds.

Fuel taxes

Politicians could seek to

raise funds from air travel

W

hen cyclist Anna

Hughes stopped flying

10 years ago, it seemed

like a radical idea. But

now the founder of

Flight Free UK has convinced thousands

of people to join herin a bid to mitigate

the climate impact of air travel.

Her campaign is just one part of a no-

fly movement that is spreading rapidly

across Europe and has given birth to a

new phrase:flygskam, or Swedish for

flight-shame, which means feeling

guilty about jetting off on holiday. “It

has become a social norm that you think

holiday, you think flight,” says Ms

Hughes, who no longer goes anywhere

that cannot be reached by bike, train or

boat. “Most people are unaware of how

flying affects the environment.”

That awareness is growing fast

though, as climate concerns have

sparked a public backlash against flying

that would have been almost unthinka-

ble even a year ago. One of its most

prominent advocates isGreta Thun-

berg, the 16-year-old Swedish activist,

who issailingto New York to attend a

climate summit next month because

she has forsworn air travel. She is set to

complete the journey today.

For airlines, the sudden take-off of

this movement presents a potentially

dangerous challenge. Passenger growth

shows signs of weakening in countries

whereflygskamis catching on.There was

a 3 per cent fall last year in the number of

passengers for domestic flights going

through 10 of Sweden’s state-owned air-

ports, compared with the year before.

The movement has not only taken aim at

summer holiday flights, but also atair-

port expansionplans including Heath-

row in London.

“This is an existential question for us,”

says Rickard Gustafson, chief executive

of Scandinavian Airlines (SAS), which is

based near Stockholm. “If we don’t

clearly articulate a path to a sustainable

aviation industry, it will be a problem.”

He says the issue of passengers’ atti-

tudes to emissions was not considered a

priority when he brought it up at the

board of the International Air Transport

Association, on which he sits. But that

has now changed. “Six months later this

was a hot topic,” says Mr Gustafson.

Airline executives have begun to take

the impact of emissions and climate

risks more seriously. “Aviation needs to

reinvent itself,” admitsJohan Lundgren,

chief executive ofeasyJet, the European

low-cost carrier.

The problem for the aviation industry

is there are fewtechnological solu-

tionsavailable that will help it reduce

emissions and address the potential

consumer backlash.

“The basic trouble is that humankind

has not worked out how to put a passen-

ger jet on a long-distance flight yet with-

out burning through something on the

order of 100 tonnes of fossil fuels,” says

Mike Berners-Lee, a carbon footprint

specialist and professor at Lancaster

University. “We have to bite the bullet

on aviation, because we just don’t know

how to do it in a low-carbon way.”

Not just a CO2 problem

Airlines account for about 2 per cent of

carbon dioxide emissions globally. But

the headline figures obscure the broader

aviation and surface transportation,

which doesn’t have these additional

effects.”

The threat of a consumer backlash

over emissions is not a complete sur-

prise for the industry. Some executives

have been trying to focus attention on

emissions for at least a decade. Iata, the

aviation industry body, made a commit-

ment in 2009 that the entire industry

would halve emissions by 2050, relative

to 2005 levels.

“It’s very ambitious,” says Chris

Goater, an Iata spokesman. “We have a

big responsibility and it is a huge chal-

lenge to deal with this.”

Some airlines, especially in European

countries with particularly environ-

mentally-engaged customers, have

made their own specific pledges. SAS

has said it will cut emissions by 25 per

cent by 2030 and is aiming to run

domestic flights on biofuels.

IAG, which ownsBritish Airwaysand

Spain’sIberia, has pledged to invest

$400m on developing alternative fuels

over a 20-year period, whileUnited Air-

lineshas said it will spend up to $2bn

annually on fuel-efficient aircraft and is

working with biofuel producers.

Exploring other options

Dutch carrierKLMeven launcheda

campaignurging passengers to fly less.

It includes tips such as “consider mak-

ing video calls instead of meeting face to

face” and “explore other travel options”

like the train for shorter trips.

With the rise of flight shame, airlines

are racing to find an answer for how to

decarbonise and reduce their climate

impact. But the challenge is that there

are no easy ways to reduce emissions

meaningfully — at least not in the near

term.

Underscoring the difficulty of the

problem, different airlines are taking

quite separate approaches to reducing

the emissions of their flights.Willie

Walsh, chief executive of IAG, acknowl-

edges that there are no simple, short-

term solutions for the airline industry.

“Therefore aviation needs to use some

of its money to provide incentive to oth-

ers and we’ll only do that where, you

know, these are real carbon reductions,”

he says.

Some airlines, including IAG, believe

one of the most promising areas is alter-

native low-carbon fuels, which could be

used in existing aircraft, but with a

lower carbon footprint. These include

biofuels, which can be made from

plants, waste or algae, and synthetic

fuel, a substance resembling jet fuel that

can be manufactured using renewable

energy. Others are pinning their hopes

on electric aircraft and hybrid bat-

tery-fuel designs.

At present, the only one of these

technologies that is being used

commercially isbiofuels, albeit at

a very small scale. California-

based AltAir Fuels supplies

United Airlineswith biofuels

made from agricultural

waste.

United has also

partnered with

Fulcrum BioEn-

ergy, which is

developing waste-

to-fuel refineries.

“We see this as the future in this space,”

says Aaron Robinson, senior sustaina-

bility manager at United Airlines.

He is optimistic about using waste for

biofuels given that it is cheaper to

develop than crops.

However, the disadvantage of biofuels

is that they are still much more

expensive than regular fuels, and would

face seriouslandconstraintsto being

scaled up.

At present biofuels can be manufac-

tured on a small scale using agricultural

and household waste, but to reach the

level of production that would have a big

impact on aviation emissions much

more land would be needed to grow the

crops to convert into biofuel.

As a result, many environmentalists

are dismissive of biofuels as a long-term

solution, particularly because a growing

world population will need more food.

To limit global warming to a 1.5C

increase in temperature would require

so much biofuel that it would take up to

7m square kilometres of arable land —

roughly the size of Australia — to pro-

duce that much feedstock, according to

a recent report from the UN

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate

Change.

“If you were to replace all today’s

aviation fuel with biofuel, with first-

generation biofuel, it would be at the

expense of 2,100 calories per person per

day for everyone on the planet,” says

Prof Berners-Lee.

“It would take almost all of human-

kind’s calorific requirements... So that

is absolutely not a solution.”

There is one area where airlines have

managed to make considerable progress

in reducing emissions — by improving

the efficiency of aeroplanes. United Air-

lines, for example, says it has improved

its fuel efficiency by 45 per cent since

1990, thanks in part to more efficient

planes.

However, these gains have been out-

stripped by the total rise in global air

travel — airline CO2 emissions in

Europe increased 26 per cent between

2013 and 2018, according to the EU. And

Iata predicts annual passenger numbers

will double to 8.2bn by 2037.

Electric and hybrid aircraft could gen-

erate another major reduction in emis-

sions. Several of the industry’s biggest

manufacturers, such asBoeingand

Rolls-Royce, are working on electric-

powered aircraft, including hybrid

“I expect air travel to become more

expensive, and this in turn will reduce

the cheapest, least valuable demand in

the market,” says Mr Röska. “Likely it

will lead to a period of slower growth

for aviation in markets that push the

emissions agenda.”

Last month France announced an

environmental tax on all flights leaving

the country, part of President

Emmanuel Macron’s efforts to win over

the increasing green vote.

The tax is initially quite low — it

starts at roughly €1.50 for economy

flights and goes up to €18 for business

tickets — but it provides a signal

that politicians are picking up on the

issue.

Activists have also started

to push for more attention

on fuel taxes — especially

as jet fuel is exempt from

taxation in many EU

countries. Sweden and the

Netherlands have

been

calling for

an EU

agreement to

introduce an

aviation fuel

tax.

Source: FT research

How planes cause pollution

Take-o

The aircraft’s initial

climb is the most

energy-intensive

part of the journey,

consuming as much

as one-quarter of the

plane’s total fuel on

short flights

In-flight

The water vapour

from the engine creates

contrails, long thin

clouds of frozen water,

which have a warming

eect. Aircraft also emit

nitrogen oxides, which

interact with other

particles to form

ozone, a warming gas

Landing

Aircraft engines emit

particulate matter and

soot, which contributes

to pollution near

airports. Sulphur

pollution can also be a

problem because of the

high levels of the

chemical in jet fuel

impact of air travel. When planes fly

through the sky theyemit other sub-

stances that have a significant warming

effect — such as nitrogen oxide and con-

trails, the long thin clouds of frozen

vapour that are visible from the ground.

A growing body of research shows the

climate impact of aeroplanes is about

twice as much as their CO2 emissions

alone would suggest — closer to 5 per

cent of human-caused warming.

Volker Grewe, professor of atmos-

pheric physics at the German Aerospace

Centre (DLR), says these “non-CO

effects”, such as particle emissions,

nitrogen dioxide and contrails, are a

major contributor to the warming

impact of planes.

“Aircraft are flying at higher altitude

of 10-12km and whatever emissions

they produce at that altitude remains

longer in the atmosphere,” Mr Grewe

says. “That is the big difference between

‘We are seeing that all

around, people are going,

“oh crikey, aviation is

actually part of my

[carbon] footprint”’

Airlines face flight

shame turbulence

Research suggests

the climate impact

of aircraft is about

twice as much as

their CO2 emissions

alone would suggest.

Below: climate

activist Greta

Thunberg—Getty Images

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TELEGRAM:

Airlines account for about 2 per cent of

TELEGRAM:

Airlines account for about 2 per cent of

carbon dioxide emissions globally. But

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carbon dioxide emissions globally. But

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TELEGRAM:

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on aviation, because we just don’t know

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how to do it in a low-carbon way.”

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how to do it in a low-carbon way.”

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