Aviation and the Environment

ATA and AIA put markers down for Obama administration

2009-02-23T11:08:34Z

The US Air Transport Association (ATA) has fired its first shot across the Obama administration's bows as it continues its fight to prevent emissions trading, or other market-based tools, in the USA. ATA president and CEO James C May has written this for the National Journal's transportation expert blog.

The next day he was followed by his equivalent at the Aerospace Industries Association (AIA), Marion Blakey, on a related tack. Not a coincidence, I think it can be assumed.

Aerospace Industries Association launches environment page

2009-02-20T09:06:17Z

The Aerospace Industries Association (AIA), the highly influential body that represents US manufacturers, has created an environment page on its website. It's called, not unreasonably I suppose, "Aviation and the Environment".

It has a page of FAQs, one of which reads as follows:

Why have I heard more about this issue in the last couple of years?
In some areas, aviation has been targeted by environmental advocates. These individuals have been vocal in their criticism from time to time and made some headlines. While well intentioned, their argument stems from a lack of information of aviation's history of environmental performance and plans for even more advances in the future.

So that's told them!

I'm not personally sure that it's the intellectual way forward though.

New Zealand agonises over effect of The Big OE

2009-01-05T16:05:17Z

I haven't been to New Zealand and chances are you haven't either. But New Zealanders go to a lot of places - notably the UK - frequently a long way away, and usually by air. And those people who do go to NZ also generally fly a long way to get there. The Kiwis, who I mentally stereotype as the Scandinavians of the South, have the good grace to worry about what all this flying is doing carbon-wise.]]> John Macilree, who blogs from NZ mostly on various aeropolitical matters, is highlighting a new study of the question from the University of Otago.

It talks about a phenomenon known in NZ apparently as The Big OE - that's The Big Overseas Experience - which is heavily responsible for NZ's contribution to greenhouse gases. Probably even more responsible is The Little OE, which consists of multiple shorter trips.

Authors Inga Smith and Craig Rodger quantify just how much greenhouse gas is being produced and to what extent NZ should be held responsible.

But mostly they examine whether there is any way that NZ can offset its emissions on a national basis. Not even close, they conclude, which has consequences. An interesting read.

Everything you wanted to know about particulate emissions

2008-12-18T16:34:21Z

View imageYou know, soot and stuff like that. The sort of thing that is an issue at and around airports. It hasn't been quite as thoroughly researched during a period when the focus has been on less visible and more damaging things like NOX and CO2. But it's a problem - and for airport planners and their regulators, local air quality is becoming a very big deal - just ask everyone concerned with the Heathrow expansion debate.

Anyway, you can now arm yourself with the finest stats available in the field courtesy of the US Transportation Research Board's Airport Cooperative Research Program. They've just published the results of a heavyweight study of the phenonemon using several real aircraft with engines covering about 70% of the US fleet. Landmark stuff.

Here's a flavour of it, but there's much, much more...

The following conclusions were drawn when emissions were sampled at the exhaust nozzle:

- The measured PM parameters for each engine type (i.e., JT8D, CFM56, CF6, RB211, etc.)

are unique. For example, in the case of the RB211, JT8D, and PW4158, the mass-based

emission indices measured as a function of fuel flow ranged from 0.04 to 0.70, <0.01 to 0.32,

and <0.01 to 0.18 g/kg-fuel respectively.

- The measured PM parameters for engine subtypes are also unique. For example, for the

CFM56-3B versus -7B engines, the ratio of their mass-based emission indices at takeoff was

found to be 4:1 (-3B:-7B).

- Credible inventories based on nozzle emission rates will require engine-specific data like

that measured in these studies.

- Black carbon PM (i.e., non-volatile particles) constitutes more than 80% of the mass of PM

emissions at all thrust conditions. At takeoff thrusts, more than 95% of the total PM mass

is black carbon PM.

'Green' hangar arises in California

2008-12-18T16:20:04Z

Interesting goings-on in Los Angeles where Shangri-La Construction has been showing off the first example of the type of 'green' hangar that it hopes to sell to aviation operators - starting with local business aviation FBO Maguire Aviation.

The demonstration unit is at Bob Hope Airport in Burbank, and Maguire is in talks to commission the same sort of thing for its operation at Van Nuys Airport where it is the major tenant.

We're talking, for example, solar panels to power lighting and electrical vehicles.

Press release here. And explanatory movie below.

Heathrow and high-speed rail pt 6 (the Zac Goldsmith theory)

2008-10-24T16:02:12Z

A few speakers rely heavily on their data slides which I'll try to update when they're released over the next week or so. One of those is Nikolas Hill, a senior consultant with AEA, but he is also the one speaker to speculate - in response to a question - about where the UK Conservatives got their figures. Notably the one that says high-speed rail is 70X cleaner than air travel.

]]> Hill suggests that they must be doing some odd things with load-factors - "perhaps using 100% load-factors" - but more importantly, taking a particular view of how much greener electricity generation could become in future.

I'm way out of my depth on that subject, but it seems that the effect of more efficient generation could be huge and would transform the environmental equation.

According to the delegate list there is a lonely Conservative Party rep somewhere in the room, but he doesn't take the bait and nobody else attempts to offer an explanation of what they're up to.

Until, that is, the lunch break, when I'm assured by the representative of an organisation with heavy aviation interests that it's all about helping Zac Goldsmith win the parliamentary seat of Richmond Park at the next election. It's one of the poshest constituencies in London (hey, I used to live in it) and very winnable from the Liberal Democrats. And parts of it really are affected by Heathrow noise.

Whether the Conservative party would seriously trash the third Heathrow runway in order to win a single seat - even for one of its best-loved sons like Goldsmith - seems doubtful to me. But then I'm an aviation guy and what do I know?

Heathrow and high-speed rail pt 5 - the international experience

2008-10-24T15:37:35Z

One of the day's most interesting speakers is not actually on the agenda, but Michel Leboeuf of the Systra consultancy arm of French rail operator SNCF gets plenty of attention when he speaks from the floor.

]]> He notes that there are 70 cities linked to the high-speed rail station at Paris Charles de Gaulle and its catchment area has been gradually growing - although it is a rail hub in its own right. In 2007 there were 3.5 million passengers at the station and growth has been 5-10% a year. As he points out: "Air France is contemplating being a train operator."

He's backed up by Paul Le Blond, a consultant for the International Air Rail Organisation (IARO). He examines the routes from Paris to Brussels, Lyon and London since they've been served by high-speed rail. To Brussels, 1h 23min away, there are now "virtually no flights"; to Lyon, at 2hr, there are still seven Air France flights per day; and to London, 2hr 15min away, there are 32 flights.

Le Blond looks also at markets in Germany, the Netherlands, Japan and the USA. Frankfurt-Cologne is an hour by train and there are now no flights (down from four daily last year.) Frankfurt-Stuttgart is 1hr 10min and there are still five flights.

From Amsterdam - "one of the best-integrated rail stations" and where a high-speed line will open next year - six flights still serve Brussels 1hr 44min away by train, and there are 15 flights to Paris 3hr 44min away. As he says it will be very interesting to see what happens from next year.

On the Tokyo-Osaka route in Japan there is a huge number of trains each day and a huge number of flights - often in those nose-to-tail economy-class 747s.

And on the New York-Washington DC corridor, the USA's less than optimum rail system provides 15 trains per day taking 2hr 50min. while there are still "over 150 flights per day" between the assorted airports.

In short, says Le Blond: "There is no clear rule about rail journey time and market share. It is very variable. High-speed stations at airports are not essential for high-speed rail to work"

Heathrow and high-speed rail pt 4

2008-10-24T15:18:51Z

Michael Hayes, managing consultant for Atkins Transport Planning, puts out the question: "Is Heathrow important to the business case for high-speed rail?" And he continues: "If you are going to build this very expensive piece of kit, which markets do you want to serve?"

He points out the complexities of trying to serve the markets for Birmingham and also for Liverpool further north, and he suggests that only Scottish traffic would experience a "significant" shift from air to rail. It might lead, he suggests, to a solution with better conventional long-distance rail services with "occasional" high-speed trains on the longer routes.

"This comes across as saying there is not case for high-speed rail," he frets. "I think there is a case, but it has got to be part of a bigger solution."

Heathrow and high-speed rail pt 3

2008-10-24T10:45:14Z

Prof Robert Cochrane of Imperial College London, who was heavily involved in the the landmark Eddington study of UK transportation, also bemoans the inadequate data - particularly on non-aviation travel, and especially the roads.

]]> Cochrane also comments: "If anyone says we need a high-speed railway but government should pay for it I would need a lot convincing. Subsidies to systems generally benefit the existing users most."

He has some good stats. Heathrow now accounts for only 25% of travel between London and Paris/Brussels - mainly people who have easy access to the airport.

And Birmingham-Brussels/Paris is only 500,000 passengers per year in total - with the leg to London being less than an hour by train. So it doesn't do much to justify a high-speed rail link.

Heathrow and high-speed rail pt 2

2008-10-24T10:23:13Z

Next up is Stuart Condie, BAA planning services director and the man whose show it is.

]]> He comments that "there is not a lot of demand-modelling data - there is a missing link in terms of who would use this". For example, he points out, despite there being a TGV station at Paris Charles de Gaulle, there are still something like five flights per day to the airport from places like Lyon and Strasbourg which have TGV service. Plus flights to Orly as well. Although on the "quite short" routes from Lille and Brussels there has been "substitution".

He points out that flights from Manchester, Birmingham and Leeds - key markets that high speed rail could link to Heathrow - account for less than 3% of heathrow's movements.

He sums up BAA's current position thus: "We believe the idea of chossign between air and rail capacity is a false choice and would lead to to the UK losing competitiveness at a very difficult time. Clearly we need both rail and airport capacity."

Stressing BAA's fear of being out-competed by foreign hubs like Charles de Gaulle, Schiphol and Frankfurt he shows a slide illustrating major cities that have no non-stop service to Heathrow, and another listing 20 cities that have non-stops to those competitors but not to Heathrow.

Perhaps most importantly he makes clear that BAA does want a high-speed rail link. "It is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to create this. It is an ambitious plan but we believe it is a substantial and achievable one and we have targetted ourselves to put forward proposals by summer 2009."

Integrating High Speed Rail with Heathrow: BAA conference

2008-10-24T09:47:50Z

I'm just back from a small but perfectly formed conference in London organised by BAA and designed to help them, and anyone else, understand how Heathrow and the national rail system should be linked - or not. With particular emphasis on the case for high-speed rail. BAA plans to come out with its own proposals in summer 2009.

All of a sudden this has become a big deal after the UK opposition Conservative party announced, to the astonishment of just about everyone, that they would not go ahead with building the third Heathrow runway and would instead invest in high-speed rail. Their leader David Cameron personally put his name to this idea. As the Conservatives have at least an evens chance of being the next government, this is not a trivial matter.

At the conference, where there are something like 100 attendees from business, academia, consultancies etc, there is general bafflement at what the Conservatives are doing and where they sourced their supporting data.

It's kicked off by chairman Tony Travers, director of the Greater London Group at the London School of Economics. Drily noting that Heathrow is "a national treasure" - a very British, and decidedly two-edged description - he says: "High speed rail could make Heathrow easier to access and greener but, and there is a paradox here, easier to expand."

Green Regional Aircraft gets underway in Italy

2008-10-07T14:06:48Z

Today and tomorrow the participants in Europe's Green Regional Aircraft (GRA) programme are in Caserta, Italy to get the technical activity underway. Briefly, GRA is one of the six strands of the all-important Clean Sky research programme. That in turn is the pan-European research effort aimed at helping industry achieve the continent's environmental targets in aviation. GRA accounts for €174 million of Clean Sky's €1.6 billion over seven years.]]> Alenia is of course the half-owner of ATR, along with EADS, and this programme is highly significant for Italy as well as Europe. The company tried unsuccessfully to buy EADS out of the joint venture, and more recently took a 25% stake in Russia's Sukhoi Superjet. If it can position itself as Europe's centre of excellence in regional aircraft then it could be a major world player when the next generation of aircraft takes over.

And of course these aircraft could be very green indeed. Already they're the least polluting and quietest types, and the GRA work is intended to cut fuel burn, emissions and noise by about another 10% each - before further gains from future powerplants and propellers.

The GRA team will actually demonstrate technologies in the areas of:

aerodynamic technologies to cut noise (such as streamlined landing gear)
weight reduction through new materials (notably composites, in which Alenia is now a world-leader)
more-electric aircraft concepts (to cut down on engine-powered ancillaries and to reduce weight still further)
the airborne part of 4-D trajectory-based air traffic management and navigation
various other integrating technologies.

Alenia is looking to have these technologies in the air by 2013 and in airline service by 2020. Might be props, might be jets - which really is a major issue to be worked out.

(Caserta's an interesting place!)

Sustainable Aviation Fuel Users Group puts critics on back foot

2008-09-30T08:42:20Z

Well I suppose the headline above is pretty well guaranteed to spark the critics into action, but the Sustainable Aviation Fuel Users Group launched by Boeing, Honeywell, a group of ten airlines, and two environmental groups has had a remarkably neutral reception. In the tinderbox of the aviation environmental debate that's quite a success.

Another noteworthy feature of this project is that it was kept quiet until launch - also quite a feat in the leaky aviation world. The two points may not be unconnected. Obviously the new group now has to deliver, but in the short term it's difficult to argue with its aims, and opponents may just be drawing breath.

Meanwhile, I've scoured the blogosphere and just about nobody has a rude word to say about it - for now. This blog is from Liz Barratt-Brown at the Natural Resources Defense Counsel (NRDC) which is one of the partners in the group - but it's an interesting viewpoint all the same.

British Conservatives really do plan to drop 3rd Heathrow runway

2008-09-29T13:46:48Z

It's the annual conference of the Conservative Party in the UK. Regardless of how thrilling or otherwise you may find this, the fact is that they are very publicly committing to actions that stand an excellent choice of forming the manifesto of the next national government.

And a huge commitment they made today was to confirm beyond any doubt that they do not intend to go ahead with approving a third London Heathrow runway. That came from shadow transport secretary Theresa Villiers. Their leader David Cameron said as much before, and so did London's Conservative mayor Boris Johnson (although he has his own unique wrinkle on the argument). Now there's no going back.

They'll be spending the money on high-speed rail from major northern cities and London instead.

The declaration has had predictably but decidedly mixed receptions as reported here in The Guardian and here by the BBC. This of course is not a debate that lends itself to neat conclusions - but the "false choice" between air and rail argument does seem relevant.

In the reasonably plausible event of the next election ending with a Conservative victory but a 'hung' parliament, the Tories could count on the Liberal Democrats for support on this issue.

TNT chief: aviation "in denial" about long-term future

2008-09-18T13:50:09Z

Peter Bakker, who I've not met, is CEO of the integrated freight company TNT, and a very interesting man. He's close enough to aviation to know a great deal about it, but distant enough not to be too much in love with it. And he's just said something fairly remarkable.

TNT operates or controls more than 40 aircraft worldwide under the TNT Airways brand. Most of them are short/medium-haul frieghters for express deliveries. But the airline also has a couple of Boeing 747-400ERFs for long-range services - notably Europe-China.

Business is good and the airline needs more long-haul aircraft, but Bakker says TNT has told Boeing he won't be acquiring more 747s.

My colleague Brendan Sobie talked to him at the Cargo Facts symposium in Miami about why - read below why Bakker thinks what he thinks.
]]> TNT rules out buying more 747-400ERFs
Brendan Sobie, Miami (17Sep08, 13:43 GMT, 374 words)

European cargo carrier TNT Airways has decided against ordering more Boeing 747-400ER freighters and is instead looking at alternatives for buying more capacity from other carriers.

TNT began operating 747-400ERFs in late 2006 on a new route connecting Shanghai with its hub in the Belgian city of Liege. TNT only has two of the new aircraft type. It has a fleet of 47 freighters but the other 45 aircraft in its fleet are all short-haul aircraft which are used for intra-European services.

TNT chief executive Peter Bakker says the Shanghai-Liege service, which operates nine flights per week, is performing well and TNT needs more large widebody capacity to meet growing demand to connect its hubs in emerging markets. In recent years it has built up large networks in Brazil and India as well as China.

But Bakker says TNT is now looking at various alternatives for buying this capacity outside its in-house carrier because the 747-400ERF burns too much fuel and emits too much carbon dioxide to support a business case for more aircraft in the current environment.

"Two aircraft emit more carbon dioxide than all the vehicles that TNT operates in Europe," Bakker told the Cargo Facts aircraft symposium in Miami.

TNT operates about 20,000 vehicles in Europe, where it has a large mail and express package network.

Speaking to ATI after his speech at Cargo Facts, Bakker says he has told Boeing he wants to buy more 747-400ERFs but is simply unable to make a business case because he can't predict the price of fuel and the price of carbon dioxide emissions by the time the aircraft reach the end of their economic lives. "I asked them will there still be oil to put in the tank in 2044? Can I get a guarantee? You get a very technical answer that is basically 'I don't know,'" Bakker says.

Bakker believes oil prices could rise to $300 per barrel given the discrepancy between long-term supply and demand for oil and at such a price the air cargo industry "is not sustainable". He says the industry "keeps things flying forever but there's no long-term thinking".

"Much of the industry is in denial about much of the fundamental issues the world is facing," Bakker says.

Source: Air Transport Intelligence news