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Ensuring the environmental
sustainability of General
and Business Aviation
Although General and Business Aviation produce relatively low levels of CO2, they are still trying to reduce this even further. Pat Malone reports
BA faces a double
blow from
increased fuel taxes
and mandatory
emissions trading
While commercial aviation has become the bete noir of the green movement, Gen¬eral and Business Aviation (GA and BA) have attracted their share of the attention, although the amount of fuel the sector uses is minuscule by comparison.
Business jets, which comprise almost
8 per cent of European Instrument Flight
Rules traffic, produce less than 1 per cent of emissions. Piston-engine aircraft, while out¬numbering jets by ten-to-one, are estimated to use less than half of 1 per cent of the fuel that evaporates from car fuel tanks. Today's aircraft are 30 to 40 per cent more efficient than those of a generation ago. Nonethe
less, for economic as well as environmental reasons, much effort is being expended to cut emissions further, and to perfect new engines and fuels for GA.
European business aircraft are generally younger than their airline counterparts — an average of eight years old, as opposed to a commercial average of 18 — and are quieter and more fuel-efficient than older jets. They fly less — an average of 500 hours a year, compared to an airliner's 3,000 — and they fly on task rather than on schedule, carrying no 'non-revenue' seats. Unlike the airlines, which overwhelmingly service the leisure industry, they are solely business-orientated, and they are vital to the economy. They take their environmental responsibilities seriously; the largest operator, NetJets, runs a voluntary carbon offset scheme, as do many smaller companies.
However, BA faces a double blow from in¬creased fuel taxes and mandatory emissions trading. They are uniquely disadvantaged by EU legislation due to be introduced in 2012, which allows commercial business aircraft operators who emit fewer than 10,000 tonnes of emissions to be outside ETS, but requires corporate owners of jets to pay for everything even if they only operate one aircraft. Furthermore, tracking of emissions threatens to be complex and bureaucratic. Brian Humphries, President of the European Business Aircraft Association, says: "We would prefer an alternative means of compliance so that rather than tracking every flight and calculating carbon output for every type of aircraft, we contribute on
a simplified basis. We know we must pay our environmental way, and we do, but the system that is proposed will be very costly to administer."
FUELLING THE DEBATE
Fuel for piston-engine aircraft — called Avgas — is a 'boutique' product that refineries
are less and less willing to make. Where a Boeing 747 captain might put in an extra tonne of Jet-A1 fuel just for taxiing to the runway, a training aircraft will use perhaps 20 litres of Avgas an hour. Only three major
European refineries still make Avgas, and lack of refinery capacity is one of the drivers of change in the GA fuel market.
Piston-engine aircraft are the last ma¬jor users of leaded fuel and because of its lead content, Avgas is deemed to con¬taminate everything it touches. Pipelines, ships and road tankers used for Avgas cannot be used for other fuels without prohibitively expensive cleaning. Refiner¬ies must have dedicated distillation towers, tanks and jetty pipes for Avgas, or must be taken off-line for cleaning after an Avgas production run. Avgas cannot be taken through the Channel Tunnel or transported on conventional ferries. At airfields, it cannot be stored in tanks used for any other fuel. Yet general aviation cannot run without it. High-performance Lycoming and Continental
engines are manifestly unsafe when run on anything else.
Avgas needs lead because it must have a high octane rating, which reduces the 'detonation' that can damage or destroy an engine. Tetra-ethyl lead (TEL) for Avgas is produced by only one company, Innospec, at a plant in the United King¬dom, and although the company says it will continue to produce TEL "as long as there is a market", it is a vulnerable link in the supply chain. The lead deposits left when TEL is burned are corrosive
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EUROCONTROL EBAA IAOPA Yearbook 2009: The Business of Flying(43)
