A letters to York Council, 31 January 2025

Councillor

The new York Local Plan plans housing for affluent people who live similar lifestyles to existing settlements, where their carbon footprints have been calculated to be very high. These are suburban places near York’s Outer Ring Road with high car ownership. Thanks to the team behing the website carbon.place for doing the calculations. The site estimates that residents in these areas of York have carbon emissions upto five times those in the areas where residents’ emissions are the lowest.

High car ownership is an indicator of affluence, which is an indicator of high carbon emissions. For the affluent residents their emissions from flying are often higher than their emissions from driving their cars. The UK Government is claiming that in the next few decades emissions from aviation will reduce as and increasing amount of “sustainable aviation fuel” is used to power aviation.

Sustainable aviation fuel is made from biomass such as algae, crop residues, animal waste and forestry residue. Because CO2 is absorbed in the the producrion of these, it is claimed that the use of SAF is nearly carbon neutral: Some lesser emissions occur thtough in the processes that create SAF. The World Economic Forum says “the next generation of sustainable aviation fuels could manage CO2 reductions of 85-95%”.

The UK Government have a mandate on sustainable aviation fuels, The SAF Mandate. This starts in 2025 at 2% of total UK jet fuel demand, increasing linearly to 10% in 2030 and then to 22% in 2040. However, reductions in the climate effects of aviation will be less than half of these percentages. Some CO2 is emitted in processing SAF but the much bigger problem is that SAF will still have the added climate effects that are estimated by the radiative forcing index.

In Radiative Forcing Associated with Emissions from Air Travel, Stanford Scope 3 Emissions Program says

“In order to capture the non-CO2 climate impacts associated with aviation, a carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions multiplier – commonly referred to as a radiative forcing index (RFI) or radiative forcing factor (RFF) – of 2.7 to 3.0 is recommended for carbon accounting.”

This effect at least doubles the effect of CO2 emissions because of the effects of burning fuel in the upper atmosphere. A doubling is used in the Parliamentary answer in Hansard 2 May 2007 : Column 1670W. The radiative forcing effect effect is not diminished by the use of SAF.

Curent claims that SAF will bring a reduction in the climate effects of aviation are almost certainly false. It is unlikely that the effects of emissions will fall because the number of flights will increase. In particulat SAF is not a justification for increased as airport capacity is increased.

The City of York Council should be informiing York citizens of the damage done by aviation.

The slow introduction of SAF and its radiative forcing effects means that York’s aim to be carbon neutral by 2030 is impossible. Will the Lord Mayor still declare this aim at the beginning of the next full council meeting?

That would be deranged.