Tag Archives: environment

APD is not a green tax – told you so!

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As confirmed in our news story, chancellor George Osborne has admitted what we knew all along, namely that Air Passenger Duty (APD) is purely a revenue raising measure, not a green tax.

Finally Chancellor George Osborne has, albeit unwittingly in the form of a leaked letter, admitted that APD is “fundamentally a revenue raising duty” and currently raises around £2.5billion per year.
Mr Osborne’s admission that APD is nothing more than a tax grab came in a letter obtained by a national newspaper that he wrote to Olivier Jankovec, director general of the Brussels-based Airports Council International.

  • Do you think it is a green tax?
  • Do you think it should be revised up or down?
  • Do you think flights should be taxed in a different way?

 

How About High Speed 2 Wheels?

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For a long time, when asked about the need to reduce the environmental impact of aviation, my stock answer would be that transferring shorthaul flights on to high-speed rail services should be an obvious aim for governments. Yet, the more I have learnt about this governments high-speed two proposals, the more I have felt that it would be a very poor investment indeed, whether measured on economic or environmental grounds. Yes, having high-speed trains would shift some people from shorthaul flights onto less polluting rail services, but it has to be remembered that this big switch has already been largely made, especially on flights from London to Leeds, Liverpool and Durham Tees Valley, which no longer operate.

So if high-speed 2 is a bad investment, what would be a better investment? Obviously, any comparison between rail and air travel is about longer distance intercity journeys, whereas the vast majority of journeys take place within built-up environments, or are commutes between outlying towns and city centres. What if all the money collected from air passenger duty was actually put towards genuinely environmentally beneficial projects? Few things are better for the environment than high-quality off-road walking and cycling tracks, using existing historic transport corridors, especially disused railway lines. Yet, this can be done for a fraction of the cost of building new ones — the figure quoted by cycling charity Sustrans is that new cycle paths can be built for around £200,000 per mile, compared to the £155,000,000 per mile cost of high-speed 2.

Now, can these really be comparable, when high-speed 2 must surely carry far more people at much higher speeds? Yes, it might well do, but its entire business model is based on very ambitious estimates of user figures. Why put so many billions of pounds into such an inherently risky project? Whether high-speed 2 is viable or not (and we are certainly in the no camp), investing in better facilities for pedestrians and cyclists would still provide a much quicker win, both in terms of transport and human health.

Non-stop Australia flights to become a reality?

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According to this news winging its way over from Australia, V Australia, which is the international arm of Virgin Blue, are expected to announce new non-stop flights to Perth from London in 2011.

This route would be the second longest in the world, with flight times of just 16 hours – a saving of 5 hours compared to the current shortest times, due to the fact that current flights to Perth need a change of aircraft. Even compared to existing sameplane flights to Australia, the non-stop service still offers a huge time advantage, as the routing is direct and there is no need to re-fuel.

This move will see the Virgin group continue its advancement as a truly pan-global company – although I hesitate to use the term ‘network’, since the airlines are each operated independently. An additional non-stop route between Sydney and New York will also be offered – another interesting development, as the majority of USA-Australia flights operate to west coast hubs such as Los Angeles and San Francisco.

It will be interesting to see what sort of fares are offered on this route – the economics of operating these ultra-long flights aren’t as simple as just finding a way to avoid an un-needed set of airport charges. For this type of flight, aicraft don’t just need extra fuel - they also need extra fuel to carry the fuel that they will need later on in the journey. For this reason, Singapore Airlines, which offers the current longest flight in the world between Singapore and New York Newark, operates a business-class only service, thus cutting down on weight.

Environmentalists put Heathrow’s third runway in Dragon’s Den

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Continuation from Heathrow’s Runway in Dragon’s Den | Neighbours | Passengers | Economy

I’m not going to look at the local environmental issues – these are covered under ‘Neighbours’. This section is about the contribution of Heathrow and the aviation industry in general to climate change.

So, the arguments against are well known and well practiced – aviation currently represents around 5% of the UK’s contribution to greenhouse gas emmissions, and this figure is set to keep rising as other industries clean up their act. There is a suggestion that if current trends continue, all other sectors would have to reduce their emmissions by 90%, rather than the previously suggested 80%, just to allow people to keep flying. The most efficient form of flying in terms of fuel usage per passenger kilometre travelled is to use no-frills airlines, as they offer the following environmental advantages:

  1. Point to point service meaning no wasteful connections.
  2. Younger business model almost certainly means newer fleet – especially in the case of Flybe, Easyjet and Ryanair.
  3. No frills airlines tend to operate routes with higher load factors, and are quicker to withdraw unprofitable routes.
  4. No frills airlines use less congested airports, cutting down on ground taxiing and pre-landing stacking.
  5. No frills airlines tend to ruthlessly cut costs – and lower costs usually go hand in hand with better environmental performance.

So how can Heathrow’s third runway possibly be justified in the face of such serious environmental concerns, and the lower environmental performance of traditional ‘legacy’ carriers?

Time to play devil’s advocate:

A new runway would reduce airfield congestion and stacking

More capacity means less congestion – this is a fair point, except that more capacity also means more flights to take up that capacity. And in Heathrow’s case, this would almost certainly mean going from being 99% full on two runways to 99% full on three runways. Result – some efficiency improvements might be created, but these would be counterbalanced by the increase in flights.

We still need hub and spoke networks

However much better the no-frills airlines might seem on paper, there will always be a need for some hub and spoke routes, and only Heathrow can serve these – not Gatwick or Stansted, even though those airports might have smaller noise footprints.

If Heathrow doesn’t expand, somewhere else will – and the UK loses out without any CO2 reduction

This is true to a point, but the passengers would still need to get to the other hub airports. Taking up slots with feeders into Frankfurt or Amsterdam will use up more runway space per passenger than operating direct flights to the destinations people want to go to (assuming long haul flights use larger aircraft), so whatever BAA claim, Heathrow will always cherry pick the most important and profitable destinations, rather than serve every route it can.

Expanding Heathrow means more direct flights, so less need for connections

With regards to flights into European hubs from other UK regional airports, passengers from cities such as Birmingham or Bristol are already more likely to transfer through Amsterdam or Paris, as they have feeder routes from most parts of the UK, whereas such a short route into Heathrow would not be viable. This is obviously more wasteful than a direct flight from Heathrow, so adding more capacity and building a high speed rail link into Heathrow would partially alleviate this problem.

Verdict: The environmental dragons would always be expected to shoot down any proposal for expansion at any airport. Although there are clearly some environmental benefits, these are often outweighed by other factors. For example, for every seat which an expanded Heathrow would enable to be filled on a point to point bases, how many other seats would just be filled by transfer passengers who might have gone elsewhere? Even if a clear distinction is made between the need to minimize the contribution made to climate change by aviation as a whole and the effects of one single airport, there is still an obvious correlation between more capacity and more flights. However much BAA try to massage the arguments, the concept of ‘sustainable aviation growth’ is always going to be an oxymoron.

The BNP v Eco-fundamentalists – both are equally fascist

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I have no problem with the vast-majority of environmental campaigners, but there are a dangerous few out there who seem to think it is perfectly reasonable to impose a total ban on all domestic flights within the UK. More worrying than this opinion being widespread is the way it is allowed out on news reports without any kind of counter-argument. Yet whenever there is a suggestion of the BNP getting more air time, there is uproar.

So what is so wrong with suggesting a ban on domestic flights, in the name of the environment?  As the United Kingdom is made up of many islands, a sizeable portion of travel within her borders is always going to be made by air. Even over-land, there are many journeys which are totally unrealistic to make by rail, especially for business travellers wanting to head to important meetings and make it back in a day. People who think that it is an easy switch from air to rail tend not to be the ones that take the trains all that often.

Where rail services have improved, such as between London and Manchester, the proportion of people travelling by train has increased, but there will always be some people who will want to choose to fly, or who want to take a plane because the next step of their journey is an onward flight to another destination. As the network currently stands, travelling by train from Manchester to Heathrow is a great deal less convenient than flying.

Of course, some communication can be done by electronic means, but if travel broadens the mind, then those people who seek to prevent people from travelling must have very narrow minds. Except that they masquerade as intelligent, educated people acting in our best interests. At least we know what we are getting with the BNP – mindless thugs who want to see certain sectors of the population sent away. But we should never forget that freedom to move within our borders is just as important as the freedom to cross borders. I have spent time in Saudi Arabia, where we had to get a ’50k pass’ to travel internally, and it was a bureaucratic nightmare.

The environmental damage caused by flying is already healthily compensated for by existing APD (Air Passenger Duty), which is levied twice on internal flights – both on the outbound, and on the inbound journey. Even moderate increases in APD, when not counter-balanced by our European neighbours, result in a huge discouragement to travel within the UK, as flights abroad are proportionally taxed at a lower rate.

So by all means, let’s have a reasoned debate about choices in travel mode, and about their environmental impacts. But let’s not be fooled by people who think an outright ban on domestic flights, or even steep increases in their taxes, is remotely in the UK’s best interest.