East Midlands Airport goes all green!?

Whilst hundreds of thousands will die, millions face poverty and species face extinction due to human induced climate chaos NEMA are amongst the phalanx of corporations who are will cynically try to hookwink us with ‘green’ initiatives. Their deception cannot be considered anything other than criminal.

But we should at least thank the PR dept of NEMA for helping to remind us that the emissions from aircraft are only a part (tip of the iceberg?) of the total CO2 output from the air industry.

Their press release tells us that the proposed wind turbines will contribute 10% of their energy – saving, they say, CO2 outputs from the equivalent of 500 homes. So, running the landside operations produces the equivalent of 5000 homes worth of CO2.

Thus NEMA admits that just running the airport, excluding passenger and cargo aircraft produces 28,500 tonnes of CO2 per year (based on 5743 kgCO2 per household pa – source British Gas: Average Domestic Carbon Dioxide Emissions Across Britain)

On top of this we must add the carbon cost of the extra car journeys due to NEMA operations. Lets be generous and make some conservative estimate of the likely CO2 costs of these car journeys. NEMA provides information on their website on where NEMA passengers travel from and most are from Notts/Derbyshire/ Leicesteshire. The round trip mileage from Nottingham centre or Derby centre to NEMA is 48 km. The average family saloon produces 150gCO2/km (Source DfT). NEMA has 7250 long stay car parking spaces (we’ll ignore the additional 960 short stay parking spaces for now). So lets say, to be generous to NEMA again, that each long stay is occupied by a car for two weeks, meaning there is parking capacity for about 181,250 cars per annum. Based on these figures a ball park figure for CO2 from car trips is 1,320 tonnes per annum. This is admittedly only a crude estimate but it gives some indication of the scale of the issue. I will gladly be corrected if anybody would like to make more precise calculations.

But we are still only scratching the surface. We have also to take into account the cargo operations – anybody like to calculate the CO2 cost of over 270,000 tonnes of road freight associated with NEMA. Then there is staff travel, maintenance, retail etc etc.

But don’t worry, they say, we are installing 4 wind turbines (which of course have to generate a considerable amount of ‘emission free’ power before they have compensated for the CO2 produced from their manufacture, planning and installation!)

I was tempted to cut NEMA some slack because they do repeatedly remind us of all the jobs they generate, but then I remembered that freight cargo is about exporting jobs from local industries and farming.

Gulliver's comments are spot on, and we have some more independent research to add fuel to the debate.
Our Regional Assembly commissioned research to assess carbon trajectories for the East Midlands, and whilst the consultants were not asked to include the calculations on airfreight growth from the airport, calculating carbon emissions from passenger flights revealed:

"Allocating emissions on the basis of passenger numbers alone, NEMA air emissions are around 180,000 tCO2 in 2005, and will rise to between 290,000 and 385,000 tCO2 by 2030 on Government predictions. (Tyndall) This represents an annual increase of between 1.9% and 3%. These extra emissions will easily overcome the potential savings from any other transport policies currently contemplated, and should be included in the region’s planning." ( http://www.emra.gov.uk/files/regional-trajectories-for-carbon-emissions-supplementary-analysesmarch07.pdf)

Of course the airport will claim this is the responsibility of the airlines not the airport, but doesn't the airport benefit from the operations of the airlines?

The Goverment MUST include emissions from international aviation and shipping in the Climate Change Bill so that someone is finally taking responsibility for this polluting industry. For more info on the Climate Bill and to take part in the virtual online march please see www.thebigask.com

Thank you!