KEY POINTS:
From early next year, passengers on Air New Zealand will be invited to pay a few extra dollars to offset their carbon footprint.
The money will go to specific forest planting and conservation projects within New Zealand. Some plant-a-tree schemes overseas - where people pay extra with their booking to balance the environmental damage of air travel - have been discredited. The money has disappeared into non-specific projects with little evidence of environmental benefits.
Air New Zealand CEO Rob Fyfe is promising a scheme with integrity and accountability.
"Just paying some money for carbon credits to offset your flight doesn't necessarily make you feel any better if you don't know where the money is going.
"We are working with the Department of Conservation and the Ministry for the Environment on projects where we can assist with the planting of forests and the creation of conservation estates which will help improve and sustain the environment and which will directly link with our customers."
Specific projects will be announced before the end of the year. Fyfe says Air New Zealand is embracing the carbon trading concept because the public wants it. But he says there has been no lessening of demand for air travel, either to or from New Zealand, since recent calls for people to reduce the number and lengths of flights they take.
He says the flying-versus-the-environment issue is not as big here as in the Northern Hemisphere. "In Europe, the sky is like a billboard. There are contrails everywhere. In New Zealand, you don't see a plane every time you look up."
The carbon offset scheme is one part of the airline's environment initiative. The main thrust is towards reducing fuel consumption by searching for ways to reduce weight on planes, by improving flying configurations and air traffic control to reduce waiting times in the air, and by buying newer, more efficient, aircraft.
"The biggest and best thing we can do [for the environment] is upgrade the fleet," Fyfe says.
Air New Zealand's fleet has an average age of 6 years, compared with about 10 years for other commercial airlines, and that will reduce with the new 787-9s on order.
The Air New Zealand CEO was speaking in Copenhagen at a 10th anniversary conference of the airline network Star Alliance.
He represented the other 17 airline bosses in announcing a Star Alliance environmental sponsorship.
The member airlines will transport field workers and scientists between projects run by three groups - a Unesco biosphere programme which covers 500 sites in 100 countries; the World Conservation Union which has 1000 staff in 60 countries; and the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands (an inter-government treaty signed in Ramsar, Iran, in 1971) which protects 146 million hectares of wetlands worldwide.
Fyfe believes the environmental debate can be turned to New Zealand's advantage if people can be convinced to come here because of our clean, green image.
He differs from some Star Alliance members in wanting transport included in the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, and rails against "the re-emergence of trade protectionism in the guise of environmentalism".
- Detours, HoS
