The World in 2030

The World in 2030 133
But even though the development of green biofuels
points to a future in which jet travel is no longer a significant
polluter (certainly by 2030) it will be years before biofuels
can be thoroughly tested and production ramped up to the
necessary levels. In the meantime, what can we do?
Airlines themselves have understood that unless
they somehow reduce their greenhouse gas emissions
they will either lose business as customers become more
environmentally conscious or as governments become more
interested in regulation – or a combination of both. The
rapidly-growing European low-cost airline Easyjet itself
launched a design for a low-emissions airliner in June 2007
called the ‘EcoJet’ 266 – an aircraft that would have a highperformance
plastics composite fuselage and wings and
open-rotor jet engines.
As a large customer of both Boeing and Airbus (Easyjet is
currently adding a new plane to its fleet every twelve days 267 )
the company insisted that the technology exists for such a
super-clean aircraft to be operational by the year 2015. By
‘super clean’ the airline said that the new aircraft should be
25 per cent quieter and emit 50 per cent less carbon dioxide
than current aircraft. The new planes should also emit 75 per
cent less oxides of nitrogen than the present A320 and 737
families of aircraft. 268 But how do we offset aircraft emissions
between now and 2015?
Carbon offsetting schemes 269 vary in quality and
efficiency and even the best of such schemes cannot be
safely regarded as true mitigators of the damage caused by
aviation. In essence, carbon offset schemes enable us to