Low carbon airlines?

[SonOfRethymnon]

Hi all 😁
I’m a new member - I’ve been lurking for years, but never registered as I didn’t previously feel I had anything useful to contribute.

I have a quick question, but first a little background.
Im trying to write a business case for a trip to Australia to attend and speak at a conference in Adelaide. I work for an environmental organisation that tries to avoid flying, so it will be a hard sell to our Directors.

My question - are there any airlines flying there from the UK that are carbon neutral 🤣 or at least offset some of their emissions?



If my proposal is accepted I’m sure I’ll be back with more questions around timings, routing, bags etc... I haven’t flown long haul since 2011, so I imagine that my previous experience is out of date!

Thanks in advance,

Sam

[Peter47]

I suspect that its up to you to offset your emissions which you can do via a number of websites rather than rely on the airline. There is a lot of hype about using biofuels, etc but the amounts are quite low compared with their total total use of fuel. As a form of "pump priming" the airlines are right though.

If you want to minimise your carbon footprint:
Choose a direct routing (although this may not be true if you are occuping seats that would otherwise be empty on connecting flights).
Fly an efficient aircraft type. In order of efficiency (lest efficient first) I would suggest 747, 340, 380, 777/330, 787/350 where slashes indicate I can't tell them apart.
Fly economy and the densest seating available. (I am guilty here, one of the reasons for flying SQ to Oz last year was its 9 abreast seating in their 777s)
Fly at a quiet time when there are seats that would be empty anyway (February for the North Atlantic, off peak times in European business routes, etc). I'm not sure about the Oz route.

Always remember to consider the whole cost of energy. How much energy went into constructing Greta's solar powered boat (which probably had an auxiliary engine anyway). I suspect that the cost of constructing planes is a small proportion of the total energy used. This may not be true for cars.
Don't forget the cost of getting to the airport. You are probably better off giving up driving rather than flying. If you don't drive and find Ebbsfleet Parkway really inconvenient - well fly!

I always say that there are three options with climate change:
Ignore it altogether and see more Australian bush fires. (Think of the great American dust bowl as to what happens when you don't understand the climate
Go down the Greta T route and see mass unemployment, depravation, social disorder, etc.
Try and find a solution may a little bit more for carbon (quite possibly stimulating economic growth so not significantly our wallets. Who knows, we could live happily ever after.

(Sorry I ended up being rather polemical)

[oldpax]

How much Carbon (in fuel terms)does it take to make the Carbon fibres that things are made of ..Take the Dreamliner for example?

[S.o.S.]

Welcome to the cabin SonOfRethymnon.
Your 'starter for 10' is pertinent question.

[PAXboy]

I used to be in telecommunications and involved with early TeleConference systems in the late 1980s. I found their limitations. I had a conference from London with my opposite numbers in New York, whom I had met over there and asked two of my staff to sit in. By the end of the conf, they thought the New Yorkers were a bunch of argumentative idiots. I knew they were not because I had met them a couple of times.

There is no substitute for the face to face. I think that, once met, it is then possible to have some teleconference but is is not ideal. Some things HAVE to done at first hand and you HAVE to have sat down and had a meal to understand each other better. The things that you learn over a coffee in the downtime of the convference are often the most important. In my current job, I still have to use simple audio and visual conferencing (Skype / Facetime / WhatsApp) but it is always second best.

[SonOfRethymnon]

Thank you all for your replies. As an organisation we reduce and partly offset our carbon in general, so we wouldn’t pay a third party for this particular flight - it would just disappear into the annual figure. I just wondered if I could use a particular airline or route that might be x% less than average as part of the business case.
I completely agree with PAXboy about face to face meetings and networking - this is all standard standard activity for me in the UK, and wouldn’t even need approval, I’d just do it. It is just the international element (esp. air travel) that need special approval.

thanks again,

Sam

[Lookleft]

Qantas generate a lot of media coverage about their carbon offsets and waste reduction strategies. At the end of the day the airliners of today are much more fuel efficient than those of even 20 years ago. Maybe start your business case with the fact that most airlines have more than halved their emissions by using aeroplanes with two engines instead of four.

[Buswinker]

It would be a bit of a complicated question to work out the best option I suspect. For example, qantas do a good line in carbon offsetting, but then I suspect that something like the QF9/10 route is a relatively higher polluter (compared to a higher density Dreamliner operator). Does the lack of a take off/landing at a midpoint offset the carbon footprint of flying ULH fuel requirements around? Answers on a postcard please ;)

[ATNotts]

I used to be in telecommunications and involved with early TeleConference systems in the late 1980s. I found their limitations. I had a conference from London with my opposite numbers in New York, whom I had met over there and asked two of my staff to sit in. By the end of the conf, they thought the New Yorkers were a bunch of argumentative idiots. I knew they were not because I had met them a couple of times.

There is no substitute for the face to face. I think that, once met, it is then possible to have some teleconference but is is not ideal. Some things HAVE to done at first hand and you HAVE to have sat down and had a meal to understand each other better. The things that you learn over a coffee in the downtime of the convference are often the most important. In my current job, I still have to use simple audio and visual conferencing (Skype / Facetime / WhatsApp) but it is always second best.

Couldn't agree more about teleconferencing. I have the (misfortune) to have to take part in Webex meetings. They simply don't allow the same level of interactivity that face to face offers, but of course for businesses they are cheap, no matter the quality is reduced, and when you then add in corporate green / carbon neutral policies they are going to become more prevalent.

As for "Carbon Neutral" airlines, I'm as sceptical about them as I am when a well know supplier of motor fuels (formerly using the prefix Royal Dutch) claims their product is carbon neutral!! Largely marketing tosh and hype, and probably almost impossible to verify.

[Paul Lupp]

If your speech will result in reduced emissions somewhere, can that be used as justification?

The planes are going to fly anyway, they are already scheduled, so it's not as if you flying will add to emissions

EDIT: And let's face it, look at how much emissions could be saved if there were no air traffic control delays with flights in holding patterns for many minutes prior to landing, or planes spending ages in a queue taxi-ing prior to departure. It can't be too difficult to write software that would sort out planes only starting their engines when they could more-or-less proceed without stopping to their allocated take-off slot

[SLFAussie]

This just-published article is a bit tangential to the original question, but might allow a decision on which airline to choose:
https://theconversation.com/major-airlines-say-theyre-acting-on-climate-change-our-research-reveals-how-little-theyve-achieved-127800

Whenever I've booked a flight on Qantas I've been given the option to carbon-offset (at extra cost), and they aren't shy about promoting it: https://www.qantas.com/ar/en/qantas-group/acting-responsibly/our-planet/carbon-offsetting.html . I think that it's more than just green-washing, but it would be a research project in its own right to find out the effectiveness of this schemes.

The reality of travel to and from (and even within) Australia is that it involves plane flights because of the distances and because Australia is 'girt by sea'. Australians have an interest in ensuring the sustainability of plane travel or the country risks being isolated if the carbon impact becomes unsustainable.