a) Is the climate changing?
90% of Britons reported that they believed the climate is changing. 41% said a lot, 49% said a little. These figures are down very slightly since 2006.

b) Perceived impact on future generations
Respondents were asked to assess how much climate change would affect future generations. 85% reported that it would impact ‘a great deal’ or ‘quite a lot’. This figure is down from 89% in 2006.

c) Concern about climate change
76% said they were concerned (either ‘very’ or ‘fairly’) about climate change. This figure has declined 5% since 2006.

d) Willingness to change behaviour in response to the climate change problem
About three quarters (74%) said that they ‘agreed’ or ‘agreed strongly’ with the statement ‘I would be prepared to change behaviour to help limit climate change’. The DfT survey does not give a comparable figure for 2006

e) Cutting car use for the sake of the environment
Just over half (58%) of respondents agreed with the statement that ‘individuals should try to limit car use for environmental reasons’. This figure is down 4% since 2006.

The survey also asked about the contrasting statement ‘people should be allowed to use their cars as much as they like even if [they cause] environmental damage’. 37% of people agreed with this statement, up sharply from 26% in 2006. To emphasize this point; more people said that car drivers should ignore environmental issues than said that they would not be prepared to ‘change behaviour to help limit climate change’ (point d).

f) Personal actions
The survey then asks people what they themselves would be prepared to do in the next twelve months to help limit climate change. Recycling was mentioned by about nine in ten (i.e. about the same number that said that the climate of the UK is changing) but only about a quarter mentioned restricting the number of flights that they took. Only about 10% agreed with increasing the tax on petrol (down 4% since 2006).

g) Actual behaviour
The DfT survey does not ask about what people have actually done to reduce their own responsibilities for emissions. But we know from other survey work that a relatively small number of people have taken significant and painful action on personal emissions. Most people now recycle actively and have installed low-wattage light bulbs. Only about 5-10% have decided to stop flying or not to own a car for environmental reasons.

Points a) to g) suggest the following hierarchy:

Broadly speaking, other survey results show the same numbers and also repeat the small decline in the percentages of those worried or acting on climate. But, to repeat, the very cold UK winter of 2009/2010 and the stream of revelations about the IPCC and the CRU may have pulled all these figures down further.

Image source: Aviation Enviroment Federation.

The UK government asked the wrong question. It demanded that the Committee on Climate Change calculated how much air travel can rise without causing an increase in aviation emissions. Not unsurprisingly, the CCC answered by saying that the number of trips could rise at the same rate as efficiency improvements in air travel. The Committee said that emissions per passenger will fall by about 1% a year, and so travel could rise by about this amount. No shocks there.

By 2050, the CCC opined, the number of passengers taking trips from UK airports can rise to 370 million a year, up from 230 million today. The maximum possible number of new passengers at Heathrow from the addition of new runway and sixth terminal is about 60 million. Hoorah, said the industry, there’s space for the expansion. Unsurprisingly, the press misinterpreted the Committee’s report and said that it had ‘approved’ the government’s plans for the airport. By answering the government’s disiningenous question, the CCC has lost some of its impartiality.

***

The Department for Transport played a blinder. It could have cautiously asked the CCC whether Heathrow expansion posed a threat to the UK’s climate target of an 80% emissions reduction. Or were the costs to cut emissions more rapidly in other sectors greater than the benefits from aviation expansion? Then the Committee could have pondered and said that since Heathrow growth will add about 1.5% to the UK’s emissions, it definitely doesn’t make achieving the targets any easier.[1] But no, the DfT didn’t give the CCC this option. It simply required the CCC to do a bit of arithmetic:

Maximum air travel increase allowed = (rate of airframe / engine improvement X rate of replacement of planes) + air traffic control improvements + (rate of biofuels introduction X carbon intensity saving) + improvements in load factors.

Perhaps the CCC resented the limited brief. It actually made some quite conservative assumptions about each of the elements in this equation, pushing the government’s figures down as far as it could. Nevertheless, if you simply want to hold the UK’s emissions from aviation bunker fuel down to the current level of 37.5m tonnes, a new runway at Heathrow is clearly possible.

Rate of airframe / engine improvement
The CCC considered that annual improvements in fleet efficiency would be about 0.7% a year. This is slightly lower than the industry projects. The next generation of airplanes will be perhaps 25% more efficient per passenger kilometre than the average plane retiring from the UK fleet. At the current rate of aviation growth and the typical length of life of passenger airplanes, this may mean about a 1% yearly improvement in fleet efficiency.

Over the 40 years to 2050, this apparently small difference compounds into a big gap. 0.7% means a 32% improvement over the 40 years to 2050. 1% means a 49% increase.

The chief scientist of the CCC’s sponsoring government department, Energy and Climate Change, said in his book, ‘No redesign of a plane is going to radically improve its efficiency. A 10% improvement? Yes, possible. A doubling of efficiency? I’d eat my complimentary socks.’[2] The CCC agrees with his physics-based view even as the aviation industry pressure groups pretend that much larger improvements are possible.

Air traffic control and other operational improvements
The industry says that Heathrow congestion causes emissions by forcing planes to stack over south-east London waiting to land. This is undoubtedly true but curing this will be far from simple. The CCC has taken a cautious view of what is possible. Sensibly enough, it has concluded that adding 60% to the traffic by 2050 is likely to act as a brake on any major improvements in air traffic routing. It has projected improvement of about 0.1% a year.

Biofuels
The airline industry airily talks of making flying carbon neutral (‘net zero’ in North American language) by using biofuels. The CCC took a much more conservative view, saying that the limited amount of agricultural land around the world could not be devoted to producing jatropha oil for aviation. It said that only 10% of the fuel would come from biofuels by 2050 and this kerosene would have a net carbon cost of 50% of fossil fuels.

The net effect of these changes and load factor improvements is to increase ‘efficiency’ (passenger distances per litre of fuel burnt) by about 60% by 2050. Hence Heathrow expansion is possible without breaching the artificial cap set by the government of not exceeding today’s emissions levels.

The implications for aviation’s share of emissions
Implicitly the government is suggesting that other sectors need to decarbonise faster as a result of aviation’s emissions remaining constant. Perhaps this is the right analysis – it probably is more difficult to decarbonise aviation than other sectors of the economy. But the implication of the UK decision is that other fossil fuel uses will have to cut their emissions even more rapidly than expected.

At the moment, the CO2 from aviation’s share of emissions is somewhat over 5%. The UK intends to reduce its emissions by about a factor of five over the next 50 years. So if air travel emissions are unchanged they will rise to over 25% of total emissions by 2050. (The CCC points out that restraining air travel growth to a 60% increase will require a) a £200 per tonne carbon tax; b) a shift to some videoconferencing and greater use of rail; and c) capacity constraints at many airports and even still 60% is a tight target.) This means that the rest of the economy will have to cut emissions even faster than otherwise. The space for non-aviation emissions will decline by about 85%.

It is even worse if we consider the non-CO2 effects of aviation. These include contrails and other global warming effects not related to carbon dioxide. The CCC suggests, in line with current scientific opinion, that current evidence suggests that these impacts approximately double the effect of jet aircraft. Include these effects, therefore, and aviation uses up 50% of the whole UK carbon budget in 2050. The CCC very deliberately refers to this problem but the uncertainty over the exact impact means that it doesn’t include these effects in its assessment. If the UK government decides at some stage to load aviation with a multiplier of 2 for non-CO2 effects – as is increasingly likely – the percentage rate of annual reduction in other sectors will have to be even faster than if the CCC had decided to do so today. And yet the CCC has repeatedly said that to achieve the required cut in other sectors is already hugely demanding. Giving aviation an easy ride has just made it worse.

Herein lies the problem. The UK government wanted the CCC to ‘approve’ its plans to expand Heathrow. Its remit allowed the CCC no discretion to say no to the advantages given to aviation even though the cost this expansion imposes on other sectors is high. Nowhere in the CCC’s report is any assessment of the higher cost to decarbonise other sectors resulting from the freedom given to aviation by the government’s prescriptions. We do not, for example, know the financial impact of the tighter targets for other activities such as transport, home heating or power generation. It may be that the economic and social benefit of allowing aviation to expand is very great and therefore the favouritism shown to the flying is justified. But the Committee has not been allowed to make this calculation. It has been obliged to fulfil the role of the arithmetician to the government and not its policy adviser. One has to say that this is a waste of some of the best brains in Britain.

Footnotes
[1] More detail on this assumption is provided at here in an earlier Carbon Commentary article on “Heathrow expansion” (Monday 26 November 2007), but I’m using the implied CCC figures here.
[2] David J. C. MacKay, Sustainable Energy – Without the Hot Air.

Image source: Taiga Company.

1) If you buy just one new appliance in 2010, make it a really efficient fridge-freezer. The improvements in the energy use of the best fridge-freezers have been really impressive in the last few years. If you have an old refrigerator, it may be responsible for as much as a sixth of your electricity bill. A good new machine might use less than a half as much power, particularly if it is not too large. A second benefit is that by choosing to buy a really efficient refrigerator you will be sending a clear signal to the manufacturers that energy consumption matters. An impressive new web site – www.energytariff.co.uk – allows you to compare the electricity used by almost all the appliances currently in UK shops. You can make well-informed choices from your computer.

***

2) Buy fewer, better clothes that are easy to wash. The worldwide textile manufacturing industry is a major user of energy. Additionally, growing natural fibres such as cotton or wool creates substantial volumes of emissions. A light woollen sweater might be responsible for over 40 kilograms of emissions before it gets to the shop. Even a T-shirt can embody over 6 kilograms of CO2 and other greenhouse gases. The average Briton buys seven of these a year. Could you make do with buying fewer, and making sure that they last longer? Buy organic cotton and you also know that your garment hasn’t added to the serious problems of pesticide pollution in central Asia. Can you switch to man-made fibres for some of your clothing? These fabrics generally last longer and can be washed at low temperatures, using less energy.

3) Think about trading in your car for membership in a car-share club. If you are typical, you use your car for one hour a day but pay for all 24. A car sitting at the kerb has to be insured, financed and maintained even if you hardly use it. Commercially run ‘car clubs’ are growing fast in many cities. They offer rentals from as little as £3.95 an hour or cars can be hired by the week from locations within a few minutes’ walk of your home. Car clubs reduce the cost of motoring for many people and each rented vehicle takes several private cars off the road. If there are no clubs in your area, simply sharing a car with neighbours may be a good alternative.

4) Look at the costs and benefits of putting solar panels on your roof. In April next year the government is introducing a new scheme to persuade us to generate our own electricity from photovoltaic panels. For every unit of electricity produced, the householder will get paid over 36p, around three times the price we are currently paying the electricity company for the power that we use. Solar panels are also coming down in price, meaning that on south-facing roofs in southern Britain you can expect a financial return of about 7% a year on your investment. It isn’t riches, but it certainly beats the interest you can get in a bank. Equally important, families that generate their own electricity seem to become more conscious of their energy consumption and focus successfully on cutting all their utility bills.

5) Eat less beef. The intensive rearing of cattle is a major contributor to greenhouse gases. These animals produce methane in their digestive processes and slurry heaps also generate large amounts of this powerful global-warming gas. What’s more, cows on most farms are fed large amounts of maize and other feed during the winter months. Growing these grains took energy and considerable amounts of artificial fertilizers. And as more and more of the world’s population demands meat in their diets, the pressure to cut down forests to create open pasture land increases. Perhaps 20% of the average Western carbon footprint is created in the food production chain and reducing the amount of beef eaten is an important step you can take to reduce this figure.

6) Try the new energy-efficient lights – LEDs. Many homes have replaced all their larger bulbs with energy-efficiency fluorescent lights. But many homes still have tens of halogen bulbs in kitchens and bathrooms. They use a lot of power and regularly need replacing. A new technology – LED lighting – uses only tiny amounts of electricity and directly replaces the small halogen downlighters. It’s only really in the past year that LED lights have become realistic alternatives. Before, they tended to have an unattractive blue colour and not produce enough light. But after recent improvements, now is the time to try some in your kitchen. They’re not cheap, but they’ll save significant amounts of electricity and will last for decades.

7) Keep your electronic devices for longer. Some of Apple’s fancy new computers have footprints of about half a tonne of CO2. This may be substantially greater than the CO2 produced generating the electricity that the computer uses in its lifetime. This could also be true for your new phone or your laptop. Although no one argues that you should waste power by unnecessarily leaving your gadgets on, the main focus should be on keeping them for longer. Doubling the average lifetime of our PCs and mobile phones would have a much more important impact than always turning them off at the mains socket.

8) Get better central heating controls. We all know that houses should be better insulated and have more efficient boilers. But for some households it may be simpler and less expensive to improve the heating controls. Check that all the household radiators have thermostatic valves. Make sure that they are turned off in rarely used rooms. Should your central heating be programmed to turn off earlier in the evening? Can you install a new computerised thermostat, such as the Dataterm (www.warmworld.co.uk), which will intelligently work out when your heating needs to be on or off? Running your heating with more care can save at least as much as investing in a new boiler. It doesn’t necessarily require you to run your house at a lower and less comfortable temperature.

9) Use the train to get to your holiday. Why not catch a train to the Mediterranean rather than driving or flying? The trip from London to Marseille can take as little as six and a half hours and you get to see something of France on the way. Book in advance and the one-way price is only £62, no more than a typical air fare. It’s similar with train travel in the UK. Going to popular UK holiday destinations by rail will almost certainly save you time and money and you can usually hire a car at the resort when you need it. Not flying to your holiday destination will probably reduce your carbon footprint by at least as much as any of the other choices in this list.

10) Grow some of your own food. Enthusiastically cultivated, a standard urban allotment can provide all the vegetables for a family of four for half of the year. In our household, we’re still eating home-produced tomatoes and lettuces grown under cover. If these vegetables had been grown in a heated Dutch greenhouse using large amounts of artificial fertilizer, shipped in a refrigerated lorry to a huge warehouse and then sold from an open chiller cabinet in a supermarket to which we’d driven, the carbon cost would be a thousand times greater. The advantages of local food are sometimes exaggerated: the greenhouse gas cost of South African apples may be no greater than English fruit kept in a cold store for months. But the footprint of seasonal produce that you grow yourself is tiny, and may even help wean your family off processed food.

11) Support international agencies trying to decrease the worldwide growth of population. The world now has over 6.7bn people, probably rising to well over 9bn by 2050. Each additional person adds to the strain on the planet’s ecology. Mike Berners-Lee, a leading researcher on carbon footprints, says in his new book, How Bad Are Bananas?, that a baby born today will add almost 400 tonnes to the UK’s emissions over his or her lifetime, even if we reduce greenhouse gases as fast as the government intends over the next decades. Cutting population growth is a vital part of any global strategy for averting the worst effects of global warming. In countless places around the world it has been shown that improving women’s education and giving easy access to family planning helps reduce the number of children in each family. As well as reducing fossil fuel use and minimising forest loss, we must therefore help women in poorer countries manage their own fertility.



A shorter version of this article appeared in the Sunday Times on 29 November 2009.