Not even the new individual-choice movie screens on a recent international flight could put the gloss back on flying for me. Ever since I learnt that burning kerosene at high altitude has disproportionate effects on global warming, the view out the plane window hasn’t been quite so rose-tinted.
The main emissions from aircraft are the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide and water vapor. Other major emissions are nitric oxide (NO) and nitrogen dioxide (NO2) (together termed NOx), sulfur oxides (SOxO), and soot. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), these other emissions create a global warming effect 2.7 times as great as the carbon dioxide alone.
Flying in kerosene-powered planes is the major activity that we currently have no alternative for. Planes require fuel with a high energy density, particularly for long-haul flights. Hydrogen is too dense, taking up all the passenger space in a plane. Burning hydrogen also produces water vapour as a by-product, which, when released at high altitude, is a powerful green house gas. Biofuels aren’t much better: they crystallize at a very low cloud point, making them unsuitable for high altitudes, as well as contributing to environmental and humanitarian disaster, which has been discussed at length (see here, here, and here). Even the IPCC declares that “there would not appear to be any practical alternatives to kerosene-based fuels for commercial jet aircraft for the next several decades.”
Good work has been done to improve fuel efficiency in air travel, with as much as a 70% reduction in the fuel consumed by jet engines over the past 40 years (Monbiot). Other efforts to reduce the amount of fuel burned per passenger-kilometer include carrying more passengers or freight on each aircraft, reducing non-essential weight, optimizing aircraft speed and flight paths, and reducing taxiing. The IPCC suggests these improvements in operation could reduce fuel burned, and emissions, in the range 2 to 6%.
But while improving fuel efficiency will bring some environmental benefit, it will only partially offset the effects of the increased emissions resulting from the projected growth in aviation: estimated to be about 5% per year between 1990 and 2015 (as measured in revenue passenger-km), with total aviation fuel use projected to increase by 3% per year over the same period. Obviously, the best approach is not to fly at all, or reduce flying as much as possible. George Monbiot, in his book Heat, is one of the main proponents against air travel, arguing that globally we need to achieve a 90% reduction in emissions in order to stay within safe levels of warming.
It makes for a tough position for those of us who live on isolated islands in the South Pacific. I suspect that the traditional OE (overseas experience) of most young New Zealanders and Australians may in the future become a thing of the past. But for those of you lucky enough to live in bordered countries, new transportation networks seem to be speeding up.
In Europe, electrified fast rail networks now criss-cross between major cities, cutting travel times by as much as half compared to previous train journeys. The UK now services more than one billion passenger journeys a year on its trains - the highest number since the late 1950s (when the rail network was even more extensive than it is today) (UK Press Association). And, this week, high-speed railways in France, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Austria and Switzerland joined with other existing international services such as Eurostar, which crosses the English Channel to France, and the Paris-Brussels connection Thalys, to form a new alliance called Railteam. By next year, the unified service will be accessible from one website, allowing passengers to book tickets across Europe almost instantly. Railteam’s aim is to increase high-speed passengers from 15 million a year in 2007 to 25 million by 2010.
In addition, new major rail lines are opening up Europe in 2007-2008, linking Eastern France with London via the Channel Tunnel; France and Germany; and Brussels with Amsterdam and Cologne. According to the last edition of The Economist, “Europe is in the grip of a high-speed rail revolution”.
High-speed rail, ideally powered by renewable electricity, seems like an ideal solution to the challenge of mass transit. In a presentation I went to recently, George Monbiot (by video conference of course), stressed that we don’t need new infrastructure; we just need to use existing infrastructure with better modes.
Substitution of air travel by rail could result in a significant reduction of greenhouse gas emissions per passenger-kilometer: a full high-speed electric train emits between a tenth and a quarter of the carbon dioxide of a plane according to Eurostar. And the IPCC estimates that up to 10 per cent of the travelers in Europe could be transferred from aircraft to high-speed trains, which could increase with faster and more distributed networks.
Growing global awareness of climate change provides something of a threat to airlines, with many now offering voluntary carbon offsets to passengers on top of ticket prices. But an attractive alternative: fast, connected international rail travel, may offer a more serious challenge. The Economist notes that European rail companies are now winning more than 60 per cent of the leisure market from airlines on six-hour journeys. Manchester Airport also recently confirmed that short-haul flights between Manchester and London have fallen by 10% over the past year. Combined with environmental awareness, the scenic views, ability to walk around, work on a laptop or mobile phone, and sit in a dining car with friends and stretch out, let alone avoiding the long security checks, plastic forks and the banning of liquids in containers over 100ml, have obviously got an appeal.
But there may be a lot that rail companies can learn from the business models of airlines, and even from cooperating with them. Deutsche Bahn (DB), a German state-owned railway, is already running co-ordinated services with airline Lufthansa, allowing passengers to transfer from a plane to a train on the same ticket.
I was about to book an inter-state flight to a family wedding next month. Today I’m investigating the interstate rail system instead. Perhaps Europe’s rail revolution signals a return to the continental holidays of old, but in fast, electricity-powered scenic carriages?
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