Climate Change - Virgin Atlantic

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WHAT IS VIRGIN ATLANTIC DOING TO COMBAT CLIMATE CHANGE? CAN YOU GIVE SPECIFIC DETAILS?

Virgin Atlantic is committed to reducing its environmental impact by becoming a more efficient business, leading the industry to practical and technical solutions and engaging, inspiring and empowering our staff and customers to help us meet this challenge.

In the air

Virgin Atlantic is continuing to evaluate more efficient ways of operating its existing fleet of aircraft, until the manufacturers can develop technological solutions to reduce carbon emissions such as innovative aircraft design or commercially viable and truly sustainable alternative fuels.

Putting our planes on a diet - We've also been working hard to remove any extraneous weight from our aircraft. Weight (and the fuel needed to fly it around) is now a key consideration in developing new onboard products and services, and finding lighter-weight alternatives to existing materials can add up to considerable emissions reductions over the course of a year. We have set a target of removing one tonne per aircraft this year alone.
Cleaner planes - We have ordered 15 new Boeing 787 Dreamliner which burn around 27% less fuel per passenger than the A340-300 they will replace due to new engines, less weight, more efficient systems and advanced aerodynamics. This will help us to achieve our target of improving our fuel efficiency per revenue tonne kilometre by 30% by 2020.
Ground power - We have been working to improve the availability and reliability of fixed electrical ground power to our aircraft from the central airport system rather than using the aircraft’s auxiliary power and burning substantial fuel to run onboard electrical systems whilst on the ground.
Biofuel demonstration - In March of this year we ran a biofuel demonstration with Boeing, Virgin Fuels and engine manufacturer GE Aviation. This was a world first flight using biofuel by a commercial airline.
Other initiatives - Where Virgin Atlantic can't have a direct impact on reducing our emissions and environmental footprint, we're working closely with other sectors of the industry to develop models of best practice that can be adopted globally. Reducing emissions generated during the taxying phase of the flight needs the cooperation of many different companies and organisations, but we're confident that there are a variety of initiatives underway which will allow us to operate our aircraft even more efficiently in the not-too-distant future.

For the first time ever, air passengers will be able to offset their travel during a flight as Virgin Atlantic introduces a Gold Standard Carbon Offset Scheme. The airline has partnered with myclimate to offer the scheme which is available onboard and online, and will benefit projects in India and Indonesia. Virgin Atlantic has committed to Gold Standard projects because it believes that this is the only offset standard that guarantees a positive additional impact on the local communities and the environment.

We are also campaigning for a Single European Sky that, by providing more direct air traffic control routings over Europe, would have a dramatic impact on reducing carbon emissions and allowing aircraft to operate more efficiently. Like the EU Emissions Trading Scheme, of which we are also a big supporter, this will need international cooperation and should be treated as a matter of priority by all governments.

On the ground

All of the electricity we purchase to run our key office sites is from renewable sources and we are looking into extending this across all of our ground operations. We have set a target of onsite generation of 100% of our electricity for our main UK sites by 2020 and reducing our energy consumption by 10% by 2020.
We are also working hard to reduce our consumption of natural resources where we can and so have set targets to reduce our water consumption by 10%, and our paper consumption by 25%, both by 2012.
Virgin Atlantic has a well-established recycling scheme at all of our office locations and ensure that waste from our engineering facilities is disposed of in the appropriate manner. We are now receiving how our off-aircraft waste is dealt with and have set a target to only 50% of our waste will go to landfill by 2012.
We are working to inspire and engage our customers on the subject of climate change, to empower them to understand what they an do to reduce the impacts of their lifestyle on the environment. To that end we have launched our Gold Standard carbon offset scheme in 2007 which our staff and customers can get involved in on our website and onboard our planes.
We are also reviewing our key products and suppliers to evaluate where we can provide more sustainable products as part of our award winning service. For example we switched all of our coffee and tea to Fairtrade onboard our aircraft last year.

Richard Initiatives

Travel Profits - Sir Richard Branson has committed all of his profits from the Virgin Group’s transport interests, including Virgin Atlantic and Virgin Trains, over the next 10 years. The funds will be invested in schemes to develop new renewable technologies, through an investment group called Virgin Fuels.
$25 Million Prize - Sir Richard and Al Gore have set up a global science and technology prize – The Virgin Earth Challenge – to encourage technological advancements for the good of mankind. The prize will be awarded to the individual or group who is able to remove one billion tonnes of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.

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