Just how big a carbon footprint does air cargo create and what can the industry do to lessen its impact on the environment? Long shrugged aside by industry executives, these questions are becoming increasingly difficult to ignore.
Equally difficult is finding a way to identify and segregate air cargo's true impact on and contribution to global carbon dioxide emissions.
Peter Morrell, professor at the Department of Transport at Cranfield University in the United Kingdom, says aviation contributes about 2.3 percent to global CO2 emissions. But out of that figure, air cargo's contribution on both freighter and passenger flights varies at between 0.3 percent to 0.6 percent.
"In reality, freighter flights contribute little more than 0.3 percent of emissions," says Morrell. "Also, most freighter flights are much more fuel efficient than passenger flights."
Source: Air Cargo World, http://www.aircargoworld.com