Airplane carbon offsetting
Added on Fri January 17th, 2020
Recently, we are very often hearing about airplane carbon offsetting. But what does it mean?
Last November, EasyJet, the famous european airline company, announced that it would become the world’s first airline operating net-zero carbon flights. It would achieve this by carbon offsetting all its flights. The airline plans to do this with “forestry, renewable and community-based projects.” It has also signed an agreement with Airbus to research the possibilities of hybrid-electric aircraft.
After EasyJet, also Qantas airlines has pledged to go net-zero on carbon emissions by 2050 and British Airways will carbon offset all its UK domestic flights from 2020 and has also pledged to go net-zero on carbon emissions by 2050.
Unfortunately, there are a lot of complain about this topic because a 2017 report for the European Commission looking at carbon offsetting found that 85% of offset programs for the UN’s Clean Development Mechanism failed to deliver “real, measurable and additional” emission reductions, and noted that some projects would have happened anyway.
However, EasyJet spokesman old its offset schemes were rated by globally recognized monitoring bodies Gold Standard and Verified Carbon Standard. Qantas says its offset program to protect the Great Barrier Reef and the forests of Tasmania and Papua New Guinea is also accredited by the same monitoring bodies and marks significant steps in mitigating the airline’s impact on the environment. The airline says it’s also funding research and innovation to create sustainable aviation biofuel.
Read the CNN article.
More info:
Zero emission airplane: are we far from that?
How to be sustainable when you travel by plane?
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