Lufthansa is working decisively together with airports, air traffic control services, and policy makers, in among other ways, within the initiative Air Transport for Germany to ensure sustainable mobility. Under the Strategic Environmental Programme, which will serve as a basis, the airline has established 15 guiding principles that point the way to continually achieving further crucial progress by 2020:
1. Reduce carbon emissions
Lufthansa is growing without harming the climate. Since 1991, the airline has provided 50 per cent of its additional transport services in a carbon-neutral manner – an increase in efficiency that no other mode of transport can claim. The airline’s further goals are ambitious: By 2020, Lufthansa would like to reduce its carbon footprint by 25 per cent per flown kilometre relative to 2006.
2. Cut nitrous oxide emissions
Lufthansa has also been able to reduce nitrous oxide emissions – which is crucial to local air quality – by 50 per cent since 1991. The Advisory Council for Aeronautics Research in Europe (ACARE) plans to develop technologies by 2020 to reduce nitrous oxide emissions by another 80 per cent relative to the year 2000. Lufthansa vigorously supports this ambitious project and is pressing aircraft manufacturers to implement low nitrous oxide technologies.
3. Modernise fleet
Green technologies will really be implemented only if airlines continually modernise
their aircraft fleets. Lufthansa, for instance, is placing into operation over 170 new,
fuel-efficient aircraft with a list value of roughly 14 billion euros in the coming years.
Airbus and Boeing are called on to achieve further progress in reducing greenhouse
gas and noise emissions, in particular for their A320 and B737 families of
aircraft.
4. Promote alternative fuels
Second and third generation biofuels – to the extent they do not compete with food production – are a crucial component in avoiding emissions in the future. Lufthansa plans to blend up to 10 per cent of biofuel with conventional jet fuel by 2020. In order for the airline to be able to do so, alternative fuels have to be available in sufficient quantities and at an acceptable price. To this end, Lufthansa is striving to form strategic partnerships and thus accelerate the development of biofuels to bring them to market.
5. Increase efficiency in the operational sphere
The operational sphere offers numerous possibilities to optimise efficiency – better flight routes, flights with variable speeds, and ideal aircraft loading, just to name a few. Lufthansa is continuing its efforts in this field in consistent fashion.
6. Improve infrastructure
Congestion in the air and on the ground leads to unnecessary fuel consumption. Alone in 2006, insufficient infrastructure accounted for consumption of roughly 142,000 tonnes of jet fuel at Lufthansa. It is therefore evident that airports must be expanded to keep up with demand and airspace must be used in an optimal manner. Here, policy makers in particular are called on to create the appropriate regulatory environment and introduce necessary measures in a timely manner.
7. Implement emissions trading on a global scale
Emissions trading can create appropriate incentives to cut carbon emissions. However, if the aviation industry is included in the trading of emissions allowances only in individual regions, the benefits to the climate will be marginal. Moreover, such a scheme threatens to create severe market distortions. That is why Lufthansa is working within international bodies to promote a global emissions trading scheme for air transport.
8. Continue offsetting carbon footprint
Since September 2007, Lufthansa, together with its partner myclimate, has been offering the opportunity to its customers to offset carbon emissions through a voluntary donation. The sum is based on the actual average fuel consumption per passenger on the relevant route and flows directly to projects to protect the climate.
9. Develop further incentive systems
Green incentive systems – which are designed to be cost-neutral – are the right
approach to ensuring sustainable mobility. Take, for example, emissions-dependent
airport charges. Under this system, innovative airlines with fuel-efficient aircraft
pay less, while high fuel-consuming planes pay more. It is currently being
implemented at the Frankfurt and Munich airports, where a three-year test phase
has been ongoing since January 2008 as part of the German Air Transport Initiative.
10. Reduce aircraft noise
Residents living near airports must be protected from unacceptable levels of noise. Here, too, investments in new and quieter aircraft must be the method of choice to achieve tangible improvements. Through continual fleet modernisation and active participation in research and development, Lufthansa wants to help achieve the ACARE research goal. Under the ACARE program, technologies that can reduce noise emissions by 50 per cent relative to the year 2000 are to be developed by 2020.
11. Improve aircraft
Even the noise caused by currently available aircraft can be reduced. To accomplish this, it is necessary to extensively research sources of sound. Lufthansa, along with its partners, is analysing sound-generating mechanisms and developing feasible solutions on this basis.
12. Optimise flight procedures
Lufthansa is advancing development of quiet flight procedures. To this end, it is expanding its overflight measurements on a Boeing 747-400 in 2008. At the same time, it is important that new flight procedures take into account aspects of security, capacity, and efficiency. That is why all the system partners – airports, air traffic control services, and airlines – must pull together.
13. Develop comprehensive traffic concepts
Efficient transport demands that modes of transport be linked in an optimal manner. Lufthansa supports respective measures to achieve this end wherever it makes ecological and economical sense. One such successful project is AlRail: The flight begins at the Lufthansa check-in counter at the train stations in Cologne and Stuttgart. There, boarding passes and seat assignment for connecting flights from Frankfurt are issued and ensure a comfortable transfer at the airport.
14. Build green
Conservation of natural resources also continues to be a centrepiece of the airline’s planning, renovation and construction of new corporate buildings. The Lufthansa Aviation Centre is exemplary in this regard. Thanks to thermal-active ceilings, heat-sensing shade automation, and a thermally insulated exterior, the new administrative building consumes only about one-third of the energy used in conventional office complexes.
15. Expand environment management
Lufthansa is managing its environmental protection efforts. Its environmental concepts
department coordinates all corporate-wide goals, strategies, and measures.
In addition, its 25 German environmental representatives regularly exchange
ideas within a forum. Over the coming years, environmental management is to be
expanded at all levels and examined and evaluated by external experts – it’s all
part of the airline’s daily efforts to achieve sustainability.
More Information:
Policy brief - Special on the "Environment" June 2008
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To find out more about responsibility at Lufthansa, read the latest sustainability report Balance.