Sir Richard Branson thinks so. Last week, he pledged approximately $3B dollars towards doing just that as part of the Clinton Global Initiative (see previous post). Now he has challenged airlines, airports, air traffic controllers and governments to work together to cut 25% of the world's aviation carbon dioxide emissions and to do it at a speedy pace. The aviation industry is currently responsible for about 2% of global carbon dioxide emissions.

Part of his plan is to more efficiently move aircraft at busy airports. "One of those ideas is to set up starting grids at the airports so that instead of sitting on planes with CO2 spewing out of those planes for anything up to 60 minutes-90 minutes ... while you're waiting to get on the runway to take off, you're towed by a small tug to the starting grid and then the pilot would turn on the engines 10 minutes before take off and then take off." he explained. "We've worked out, on a global basis, we're talking about billions of tonnes of CO2 savings just on that idea alone."

Other benefits - an estimated reduction in fuel consumption of between 50-90% and people living next to airports would experience lower noise levels and cleaner air.

Let's hope this maverick in the aviation industry has enough clout to get others to buy in.

Gillian Parrillo
The Sacramento Executive