Virgin Atlantic is to work with the think-tank and consultancy Forum
for the Future in an effort to improve its sustainability performance.
The airline is the first in its sector to become a corporate partner of
the UK-based organization, with which it will ‘identify opportunities
to further integrate sustainability into company strategies and
activities’.
The move follows Virgin Group’s autumn decision to invest all profits
from its five airline and train companies over the next ten years – up
to £1.6billion ($3.15bn) – in commercial ventures producing renewable
energy, and to introduce limited measures to cut carbon dioxide
emissions. The latter include towing aircraft to take-off areas to cut
fuel consumption and making
planes lighter.
Sir Richard Branson, chairman of Virgin Atlantic, said his company had
linked with the forum to ‘focus on sustainability right across the
business’. He claimed Virgin was already at ‘the forefront of
developing the solutions we need to tackle global warming’, but
Jonathon Porritt, co-founder of the forum, was more guarded. ‘We hope
that by working together we can help the airline understand what
sustainability could look like for Virgin Atlantic and what operation
within environmental limits looks like,’ he said.
Sally Uren, the forum’s business programme director, said the
organization hoped Virgin could adopt ‘a leadership position in the
aviation industry over the coming months’.
In a related move, Virgin Atlantic, which made £60m profits in the year
to February 2006, has given Jill Brady, head of the company’s legal
affairs, the task of co-ordinating the airline’s sustainable
development plans and oversight of corporate responsibility matters.
Virgin Group has been relatively inactive in the field to date. Outside
the Virgin Mobile telecoms business, the group does not have a
particularly well developed corporate responsibility function.
Branson has urged other airlines, including British Airways, American
Airlines and easyJet, to create a cross-industry forum to find
practical ways of tackling climate change. Among measures he claims
could cut carbon dioxide emissions by up to 25 per cent worldwide are
changes to the air traffic control regime that would reduce the time
planes sit on the runway with engines running, and slower and smoother
descent patterns to reduce the amount of fuel used for landing.
However, BA said many of Branson’s ideas are already in place or being
considered by a group, set up last year, of 70 airlines and airport
owners, including Virgin Atlantic. BA said it had been using
‘continuous descent approaches’, as proposed by Branson, for a decade.
Friends of the Earth director Tony Juniper welcomed Virgin’s
recognition of climate change concerns, but said they were ‘going
nowhere near the root of the problem, just scratching the surface’, and
that for as long as the number of flights continues to rise, the
problem would grow.
