As a long haul airline offering flights to the USA, the Caribbean, Africa, Middle East, Asia and Australia Virgin Atlantic produces CO2. We are committed to reducing our environmental impacts where we can and the starting point for that is to fully understand our current CO2 contribution and then set about reducing it.

We've worked with emissions specialists CICS and Environ to assess both the emissions of our aircraft operations and the carbon footprint of our ground operations. For the financial year 2006/07 our CO2 emissions were:

• Aircraft operations including all jet fuel uploaded onto our aircraft whether burned in the air or during taxi-ing 4.767 million tonnes of CO2.
• Ground operations including staff travel to and from work, business travel by car and plane, plus energy consumed at our UK offices and hangars, also taking into account the electricity we buy from renewable sources amounts to 26,600 tonnes of CO2.

Virgin Atlantic have put a flight plan in place to reduce our impact on the environment across many areas not just our CO2 contribution. We have also set ourselves some tough targets:

• 30% improvement in the fuel efficiency of our fleet between 2007 and 2020
• 10% reduction in energy consumption from our ground operations by 2012
• 20% reduction in energy consumption from our ground operations by 2020

We are also committed to leading the industry to practical and technical solutions.

• Sir Richard Branson has pledged the profits from his travel concerns to fund research and develop new renewable fuels. More information on Branson's pledge
• Virgin Atlantic, with partners Boeing, GE and Imperium Renewables, successfully flew an aircraft on a biofuel blend in February 2008.
• Virgin Atlantic has ordered 15 Boeing 787-9 Dreamliners with an option on 20 more. The Dreamliner burns around 27% less fuel per passenger than an A340-300. More information on the Boeing 787
• Passengers can now offset their carbon emissions through our Gold Standard offsetting scheme in partnership with MyClimate. Offset emissions
• Sir Richard Branson and Al Gore have launched a $25 million global science and technology prize. More information on the prize