2012 Business Aviation & the Environment Report

With the debate over Europe’s emissions trading scheme heating up faster than you can say “illegal carbon tax,” aviation quietly continues the efficiency and emissions-reduction gains that have been under way for decades. Engine manufacturers are turning their ingenuity to building lighter engines that get more out of every drop of fuel and emit less greenhouse gas. If biofuel developers meet expectations, fossil fuel could go the way of the dinosaur, but nobody wants to be the trailblazer who risks stumbling and falling hard. Aviation’s green initiative extends to figuring out what to do with aircraft at the end of their life, and for business aviation this task is suddenly significant: in the next 10 years, more business aircraft will be chopped than were decommissioned in the first 50 years of business aviation.