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European Airline Emissions Fell 9.4% in 2010, RDC Says (Update1)
2011-01-11 13:31:07.430 GMT
(Adds comment in fourth paragraph, data in fifth.)
By Mathew Carr and Catherine Airlie
Jan. 11 (Bloomberg) -- Carbon dioxide emissions from
European airlines fell 9.4 percent to 171.5 million metric tons
last year as planes were more efficient, RDC Aviation Ltd. said.
"We are accrediting the reduction to strike action,
volcanoes, technological advances, newer equipment and a general
gearing up for ETS Trading," Ian Robins, a researcher for RDC
Aviation, said today in an e-mail. The figures are for scheduled
commercial aviation and may exclude some flights that starting
in 2012 will fall under Europe's emissions trading system, the
world's biggest carbon-reduction program.
The volume of freight and passengers carried last year will
determine the portion of free allowances each airline receives
in the nine years through 2020. The measurements come in a year
when planes were grounded by volcanic ash, snow and strikes.
"Airlines were certainly more effective at filling planes,
probably to increase their metric ton per kilometers and also to
be more efficient, thereby saving fuel and carbon dioxide,"
said Peter Hind, managing director of RDC, a Nottingham,
England-based provider of airline research and software.
Airlines probably dropped freight rates to help boost volumes
and achieve a higher proportion of free allowances, he said.
European airlines increased so called freight-ton-
kilometers, a measure of how full planes were, by 12 percent in
the 11 months through November 2010, according to latest figures
published on the website of the International Air Transport
Association, the lobby group based in Montreal, Canada.
The passenger load factor, a measure of how many seats were
used, was 79.6 percent in the period, compared with 76.5 percent
in the previous period, the data show.
For Related News and Information:
Top environment stories: GREEN <GO>
News about climate change: NI CLIMATE <GO>
Top transport stories: TOP TRN <GO>
--Editors: Mike Anderson, Rob Verdonck.
To contact the reporter on this story:
Mathew Carr in London at +44-20-7073-3531 or
m.carr@bloomberg.net
Catherine Airlie in London at +44-20-7073-3308 or
cairlie@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Stephen Voss at +44-20-7073-3520 or sev@bloomberg.net
