Aviation emission reductions up to 50 percent possible

January 21, 2010 

By: Jim Lane

According to Pew report, the emission reduction can be achieved based on alternative fuels, new designs and systems

In Virginia, the Pew Center on Global Climate Change said that, while aviation CO2 emissions are projected to grow 3.1 percent per year for the next 40 years, reductions of up to 50 percent below current levels are possible in both the aviation and marine sectors through advanced navigation, air traffic management systems, advanced propulsion systems, new airframe designs and alternative fuels. Green Air Online has a comprehensive report on the study, which is also available for free download via the Digest's Business Information Zone (BIZ).

Last June, the Pew Charitable Trusts released its Clean Energy Economy report, the first state-by-state survey of green-collar jobs. Pew found that green-collar job hiring increased 9 percent between 1998-2007, more than double the rate of conventional jobs, but slowed during the recession.

Pew said that 68,200 businesses filled 770,000 clean energy jobs in 2007, with California leading the way with 124,000 jobs and 56,000 in Texas.

A $100 billion investment in infrastructure to launch a "comprehensive clean energy transformation" for the United States is the subject of an ambitious set of proposals, titled "Green Recovery", authored by Dr. Robert Pollin and a UMass team of researchers, and released by the Center for American Progress.

The report, here, proposes a series of measures that will provide, according to the authors, a four times better return on investment than the oil industry and create 2 million jobs. The program includes measures for:  Retrofitting buildings to increase energy efficiency; expanding mass transit and freight rail; constructing "smart" electrical grid transmission systems; wind power; solar power; and advanced biofuels.

The authors conclude that the proposed program would reduce the cost of imports from 22 percent of household expenses to about nine.

Source: BioFuelsDigest