AEF in Action January 2014: Runways UK conference, reducing business travel and supporting work at ICAO

6th February, 2014

Those interested in UK aviation policy have spent the past month digesting the recommendations made by the Airports Commission in its interim report. The AEF has actively worked to ensure that environmental concerns remain high on the political agenda as well as the Airports Commission’s. AEF’s Director Tim Johnson, was the only speaker at the Runways UK conference to talk about the environmental implications of an additional runway in a debate about the Commission’s findings (pictured below).  We have also responded to the DfT’s 2nd stage night noise consultation and have been working with our members to put together constructive recommendations for the DfT’s guidelines on consultative committees.

Tim speaking at the RunwaysUK event in London. Image credit: Runways UK

The AEF has been involved for some years with promoting more sustainable business travel and we recently attended an event at the WWF UK Living Earth Centre to celebrate the successes of the ‘One in Five‘ challenge, where several globally leading businesses have successfully reduced their carbon footprint from business travel. We also met with Global Action Plan, who are now taking over the project from WWF, to talk about the importance of the innovative project for challenging some of the accepted myths about the need for more business flights.

Beyond the UK, we are closely following the developments in Europe about aviation in the Emissions Trading Scheme. The changes on going there could have implications for progress being made on market based measures at ICAO to tackle aviation’s contribution to climate change. Tim recently participated in an ICAO meeting which agreed the Terms of Reference for a new technical task force to help develop a global market-based measure for aviation.