Author: Tim

The aviation industry sets its own targets, yet, despite being incapable of blaming anyone else for their failure only one was met.

Easyjet set a target of reducing their fuel burn per passenger km by 2015 and succeeded in this aim. We should not give Easyjet too much credit, however, as they promised to build an “ecojet” which would emit 50% less carbon – this they havent even started.

Unfortunately, this is the point. It is not possible for airlines to just tinker around the edges, they must make enormous changes to how they operate and the planes they fly – and they must make these changes in the next decade an a bit. Waiting for some future plane, that will always be a few decades away is not enough.

Virgin promised on several occasions, that by 2020 10% of its fuel would come from biofuels. This target was not mentioned again until 2021 when they moved the goalposts to 2030.

Easyjet must be commended for its success, but it is nowhere near enough. Cutting 3% is a good start, but we need the majority of the rest over the next few decades.

Reducing how much we fly, is the only way that currently exists to cut carbon from our flying footprint. One suggestion is to have an increasing level of tax – your first flight of the year could get little or no tax, but with this levy increasing dramatically the more you fly.

HSBC has suspended a senior executive over comments about climate change. Stuart Kirk, a leader in the banks responsible investment team, claimed “there is always some nut-job telling me about the end of the world”. HSBC has refused to confirm that the suspension took place, however as his role is to analyse the impact of investments on environmental, social and governance issues it is obviously not compatible with someone who is openly a climate change sceptic (as his comments would suggest).

During his presentation he stated “Climate change is not a financial risk that we need to worry about”, and a slide on a presentation used during the speech stated “Unsubstantiated, shrill, partisan, self-serving, apocalyptic warnings are ALWAYS wrong”. Later he stated  “Who cares if Miami is six metres underwater in 100 years? Amsterdam has been six metres underwater for ages and that’s a really nice place.”

This is likely to be hugely damaging to HSBC, in recent years it has been shown that UK banks have an outsized impact on the worlds fight against global warming, and it is not to help that fight.

I for one, hope that on this occasion HSBC is forced to truly change their behaviour, many banks could have huge positive impacts on the global warming fight if they only started to engage.

They should be called out, until they become a part of the solution rather than the problem.

Finnish researchers have created a heat battery – which can store heat for months at a time. A huge pile of low-grade sand (about 100 tonnes) is heated up to around 500°C, using green energy in the summer months, when energy demand is low. This power is used (through resistive heating) to generate heat, this heat is then circulated into the sand, through a heat exchanger.

Months later, the sand can then be used to heat water in pipes, which can be used to warm buildings.

With the two seats that were essentially stolen by the republican party in the USA (the first which was kept open for over a year – because it was in an election year (never a reason before), the other of which was filled after voting had begun – completely destroying Mitch McConnell’s and his ridiculous rule), the Supreme court has now made a judgement that is so clearly political it suggests that the democrats will have to push through something big.

If an airline promises to remove all the carbon, that your flight emits, from the air – is your flight carbon neutral?

Well, in theory it will eventually be. However There are a number of issues with this. Firstly, you rely on accounting of carbon that is totally honest (something that has not been the case) and you have to trust them that they are not going to double count the carbon credits (as has happened many times in recent decades).