BBC News
Justin Rowlatt
28 November 2024
It is the perfect start to a holiday: your plane ticket is cheap, your cabin baggage is safely stowed, the engines are roaring into life - and the pilot has announced that there’s no need to worry about the environmental impact.
This is Jet Zero, a vision where air travel is entirely carbon neutral thanks to new technology and green ventures that offset the environmental impact. The plan was drafted in 2022 when Boris Johnson was prime minister, marking a step towards the government’s legal obligation to reach net zero by 2050. The Labour government has since made a similar pledge, and in addition it wants all domestic flights and UK airport operations to reach zero emissions by 2040.
This is no easy feat when you consider the scale of the challenge: one passenger taking an economy-class flight from London to New York generates 309kg of carbon dioxide, which would take roughly a year to absorb via 10 mature trees.
Multiply this on the global scale and the aviation industry would need to plant roughly 100 billion mature trees each year to offset its emissions. For UK emissions alone you’d need a forest almost the size of Wales.
So, just how realistic is the plan to hit Jet Zero by 2050? And what is the knock-on cost for passengers?
Read on: Can flights hit net zero by 2025 and at what cost to passengers? - BBC News
