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Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution
The Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution is an independent standing
body established in 1970 to advise the Queen, government, Parliament and
the
public on environmental issues.
Special Report - The Environmental Effects of Civil Aircraft in Flight -
Download from http://www.rcep.org.uk/avreport.html
Conclusions and recommendations
6.1 The Commission has expressed deep concerns about the environmental
consequences of the growth in
air transport on a number of occasions. In this Report we have examined the
larger-scale impacts of
aviation, both on surface UV radiation through changes in atmospheric ozone
and on climate.
6.2 The Commission has particular concerns about the contribution that
aircraft emissions will make to climate
change if this growth goes unchecked. The total radiative forcing due to
aviation is probably some three
times that due to the carbon dioxide emissions alone. This contrasts with
factors generally in the range 1
- 1.5 for most other human activities.
6.3 The ambitious targets for technological improvement in some industry
announcements are clearly
aspirations rather than projections; IPCC's projections are already
optimistic. Despite the considerable
opportunities for incremental improvements to the environmental performance
of individual aircraft, these
will not offset the effects of growth. Kerosene will continue to be the
industry fuel for the foreseeable
future. A non-incremental change could result from radically new airframe
designs, with improved fuel
efficiency and possibly lower noise and emissions, but this change will not
affect the industry for decades
and even then will only affect large long-haul aircraft.
6.4 Short-haul passenger flights, such as UK domestic and European journeys,
make a disproportionately large
contribution to the global environmental impacts of air transport. These
impacts are very much larger than
those from rail transport over the same point-to-point journey.
6.5 We are also concerned by the growth in air freight. Carbon dioxide
emissions and fuel use per tonnekilometre
for rail freight are a factor of 20 - 100 lower than for air. For marine
freight, fuel use and carbon
dioxide emissions are a factor of 2 or more lower again. Air freight is so
much more environmentally
damaging than other transport modes that it must be reserved for very high
value, and usually perishable,
goods. Any proposal to expand air freight movements must be examined with
particular care.
6.6 If the reductions in carbon dioxide emissions from ground-level
activities recommended in the
Commission's Twenty-second Report are achieved, and the growth in air
transport projected by IPCC
materialises, then air travel will become one of the major sources of
anthropogenic climate change by 2050.
The Commission fears that the government shows little sign of having
recognised these problems, but
regards further substantial growth in aviation as inevitable. We recognise
that the problems of reducing the
impact of air transport are more challenging than action in some other
sectors contributing to climate
change. But it is imperative that environmental priorities are not simply
sidelined as being too difficult.
6.7 We have made recommendations in this Report which encompass a wide range
of measures that the
government ought to be taking to reduce demand for air travel and to
moderate the damage caused by
the future growth that does take place:
- impose climate protection charges for aircraft taking off and landing
within the EU, and press for
such charges to be adopted beyond Europe (paragraphs 5.5 to 5.14)
- restrict airport development to encourage greater competition for, and
raise the implicit price of, the
available take-off and landing slots, in order to optimise the use of those
slots towards longer-haul
flights and to increase the prospects for a modal shift to rail for domestic
journeys (paragraphs 5.16
to 5.18)
- encourage a modal shift to more environmentally benign methods of
transport for short-haul flights,
including the development of major airports into land-air hubs integrated
with an enhanced rail
network (paragraphs 5.19 to 5.23)
- support technological development to lessen the damage done by air travel,
continuing airframe
improvements and optimising aircraft routeing (paragraphs 5.24 to 5.31)
- include international aviation in the emissions trading scheme that is
envisaged as one of the Kyoto
Protocol's implementing mechanisms (paragraphs 5.32 to 5.36).
6.8 We urge the government to seize the opportunity presented by its
forthcoming White Paper to implement
our recommendations at the domestic level, and to argue for their adoption
by the EU, and globally, where
necessary and appropriate. We believe that the arguments put forward in this
Report are sufficient to show
that if no limiting action is taken, the rapid growth in air transport will
proceed in fundamental
contradiction to the government's stated goal of sustainable development.
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