Green Prudence: Virgin Claims a Bit of Green, But Airlines Overwhelmingly Give Earth a Black Eye

by Jennifer Conlin
The New York Times
May 4, 2008

In February, on a chilly, clear Sunday morning, Sir Richard Branson, president of Virgin Atlantic, along with the co-sponsors Boeing and GE Aviation, lured more than 200 journalists to a hangar at Heathrow Airport near London to witness what they said was airline history. Over flutes of Champagne and plates of mini-bagels filled with salmon, everyone’s eyes were fixed on a 747 as it took off on the world’s first biofuel demonstration flight.

Never mind that only one of the plane’s engines used biofuel, and that was about 25 percent mixed with standard kerosene jet fuel. It was still significant, given that air travel is the fastest-growing source of global greenhouse gases, and the race to find an alternative to kerosene is now crucial. The biofuel used — a combination of coconut and babassu (a Brazilian tree) oil, which Mr. Branson pretended to drink that day like an island cocktail from a coconut shell — worked in this very small test. But even its developers, Imperium Renewables, are aware it could never become a substitute for what John Plaza, president and chief executive of Imperium, another sponsor, says is the 87 billion gallons of fuel needed each year to fly the world’s airline fleet.

“This is just a first-generation product,” Mr. Plaza said. “But the test was meaningful in that it showed that a biofuel was viable with the infrastructure in a commercial jet.” Imperium created the fuel from oils harvested from existing plantations, but Mr. Plaza said he believed that algae was the fuel of the future. “You would only need the landmass of West Virginia,” he said, “to make enough fuel to replace aviation’s demand for kerosene.”

Still, the environmental group Friends of the Earth was quick to criticize the Virgin event as a public relations stunt, restating its view that carbon savings from biofuels are negligible, and the now well-publicized position that growing crops for alternative fuels cuts into the land available to grow food. “There is a finite amount of land for food,” said Kate Horner, a climate and energy campaigner for Friends of the Earth, “and using it for the expanded production of fuel is driving deforestation, which accounts for one-fourth to one-third of our global emissions.”

In recent weeks such arguments have gained credibility worldwide, threatening the very core of the biofuel movement. On April 11, in a Washington meeting of global finance ministers to address rising food costs, some ministers from poorer countries suggested the West rethink alternative fuel policies in light of a growing food shortage. On the same day, a European environmental advisory panel asked the European Union to consider scrapping its plan to have at least 10 percent of transportation fuel come from biofuels by the year 2020.

Mr. Plaza said the biofuel industry was receiving too much blame for the food crisis. “There are many factors, like drought, that are causing the problem,” he said. “And for those of us looking for funding to develop future biofuels that do not rely on feed stocks, it makes it very hard given all the negative press.”

Few in the transportation world dispute that solutions must be found. According to the International Civil Aviation Organization, more than 2.2 billion people flew last year, and though commercial flights account for only 2 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recently stated its concerns that aerosols in jet engine exhaust may be depleting the ozone at two to four times the rate of ground-level carbon dioxide. Add to that Boeing’s prediction that by 2025 the global fleet will have doubled to 36,000 planes, and the need to find answers seems unquestionable.

There is also a growing public awareness that could begin to affect the airline industry as a whole. A British survey last year showed that 54 percent of the British population felt guilty about flying — a figure that may have risen since LastMinute.com, a British online travel site, began comparing flight emissions to domestic energy use to get people to carbon-offset their journeys. A round-trip flight to New York from London, for instance, is according to the site’s calculations the equivalent of leaving a TV and games console running for three years.

In a news statement from the second International Conference on Climate Change and Tourism, the United Nations World Tourism Organization said, “With transport as one of the most visible contributors to global warming, increased awareness regarding climate change might induce tourists to switch from long-haul to short-haul destinations.”

Indeed, carbon-offsetting companies like the nonprofit Bonneville Environmental Foundation, which sells Green Tags (certificates that finance wind and solar power projects) to replace traditional polluting sources of electricity, have seen a surge in business. “In the last three years we have seen a 100 percent year-to-year increase in individual’s carbon offsetting,” said Patrick Nye, vice president for sales.

To that end, Travelport, one of the world’s largest travel conglomerates (it owns 48 percent of Orbitz and operates in 145 countries), has just announced a new reporting tool, the Carbon Tracker.

According to Gordon Wilson, Travelport GDS’s chief executive, customers can find out carbon emissions data on flights (as well as car, bus and rail routes) so travel plans can be adjusted (for instance, a travel company may design a more carbon-friendly 10-day trip to Egypt for its clients).

Many government leaders and environmental groups would prefer to see more regulatory action taken, such as an international pact to stem global aircraft emissions. Last September a petition was filed with the United States Environmental Protection Agency asking it to address the effects of global warming from the world’s aircraft fleet.