Recently in Emissions Category

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.

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.

Rather out of the blue, IATA, CANSO and Eurocontrol have come out with a heavyweight document that seriously sets about realising environmental gains by optimised air traffic management. It's a "five-point plan" that essentially lays out the things that will definitely have to be done in order to get the benefits that are generally accepted to be achievable.

We can only hope it's followed up with action. ATM - in both the US and Europe in fact - is the one bright hope for emissions reduction in the forseeable future.

In The Guardian today George Monbiot urges the world to investigate the possible use of hydrogen-powered airships for long-haul travel more closely.

There's no doubt it's an interesting area, but a lot of people have been pursuing various airship concepts for quite a while now - including the US Navy in quite a big way - and they haven't made a great deal of progress. Putting speed to one side, there really are some serious operational questions about making this practical.

On the other hand, it is the sort of technology that would benefit from some heavier weight research than it has so far had.

CNN has a lengthy (by their standards) piece on how airlines are focusing on weight saving in the cabin once again as fuel bills keep on going up. This one seems to come round every few years whenever costs bite, but then the wins slowly get chipped away in the intervening years. But this is one of those issues where what's good for the balance sheet is also good for the environment.

Not an easy browse, but the Australian Transport Statistics Yearbook 2007 has plenty of stats on emissions of all kinds for those of you sufficiently dedicated to your various causes. You're looking for Chapter 10 / p133 onwards. Put the kettle on first!

Glenn Alderton's Qantas DC-3 picture shows the proverbial more innocent age and is featured purely in the interests of lightening up this post!

IATA - the scheduled international airlines trade body - is going to help out an experimental programme to fly an aircraft around the world, through the day and night, using only solar power. The Swiss-based Solar Impulse team is due to fly the aircraft in the last quarter of this year and make the global voyage in 2011.