19/10/2010-Newcastle International misleads the public again

The airport once again is trying to convince the public that they are green. This makes me very angry!

Plans that appear to be more environmentally friendly have been released (covered in the Sunderland Echo and elsewhere - see http://www.sunderlandecho.com/news/local/greener_airport_1_1792835). The airport is putting itself forward as a model of green behaviour when it is one of the region's worst polluters.

While it is good news that they are installing low-energy light bulbs in their buildings and using electric vehicles around the terminals, this is a tiny drop in the ocean when you look at the whole picture. The problem of airport emissions is not the airports, it is the aeroplanes.

Over the summer there are 200 departures and arrivals at Newcastle every day. As the average flight emits approximately 16 tonnes of CO2, that makes roughly 3200 tonnes a day or around 1 million tones of carbon dioxide a year that the airport is pumping into our overheated atmosphere.

Quite how and why they were awarded a Carbon Trust Standard in recognition of their work on reducing energy use is an utter mystery, and I can only assume that the management team now believes that they can convince anyone of anything.

Whether the public wants to fly or not isn't the only issue here: what is equally important is that we aren't deliberately misled by one of our region's major institutions. The aviation industry is many things, some positive, some negative, but it is absolutely not, and never will be, green.

There! I feel better now.