Airlines May be Ready to Take off
By NunoXEI • Apr 5th, 2008 • Category: Blog
The air travel industry has been quietly evaluating ways to improve fuel efficiency and reduce emissions. Airlines can only raise ticket prices so high to compensate for rising fuel costs without losing customers, and the industry’s reputation as a climate change villain is an increasing threat to profits. Airlines are facing several incentives to change their environmental performance or be faced again with bankruptcy. And with several airlines now testing various types and blends of biofuels, a shift in air travel could spell renewed profits for the biofuel industry as well.
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NunoXEI is Co-Founder of TheGreenRocket.com and self proclaimed internet-surfing-guru. You can find his personal blog at NunoXEI.com, the home of his podcast, The Lowdown, his comic-related properties and his webcomic, Republic Domain.
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Carbon trading and re-routing flights are such cop-outs. It makes life hard for the little guys to get a foot in the industry, and does nothing to encourage r&d in alternative methods, just sustains the problem that’s already there! In any case, I am glad to hear the pressure is on to develop biofuel… that idea needs to be publicized twofold – to gain more support for the alternative fuels (so they can be implemented into public policy), and to bring awareness to consumers blaming high prices on biofuels — their issue with rising costs lies elsewhere…
On a side note – Air travel is one of the things I participate in regularly that plays to my guilty conscience of leaving a carbon footprint (especially cheapo RyanAir flights). So I was quite excited when I recently came across some of the voluntary programs mentioned in that article for carbon offsetting. British Airways has the option on their website for online transactions. Albeit it was wayyyyy at the bottom of the page in a small button… but was only around $37 extra to offset carbon for a $850 flight from Toronto to London! Why isn’t this mandatory yet?! Its so cheap!!
Also, I was pleasantly surprised to read about the Eindhoven Airport in Holland, who plan to offset their own carbon emissions 100%. Way to go guys for sustainable business practices.