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Denmark appoints airline exec to cut flight emissions

Denmark's government has appointed a top airline executive to head a new public-private partnership aimed at reducing carbon emissions from the aviation industry.

Published: 6 November 2019 14:35 CET
Denmark appoints airline exec to cut flight emissions
Simon Pauck Hansen, Chief Operating Officer of SAS, argues that new, more efficient planes can be part of the solution. Photo: SAS
The partnership will be a key part of the country's push to reach its ambitious goal of slashing CO2 emissions by 70 percent by 2030. 
 
Simon Pauck Hansen, Chief Operating Officer of SAS, is to be partnership's chairman. He will look at how new, lower-emissions aircraft and lower emissions fuels can be used to achieve Denmark's “extremely ambitious but not unrealistic” goals. 
 
“There is both new technology in the market in the form of new aircraft, and technology on the way with new fuels that can help us to drive current aircraft operations more sustainably,” he said in a press release issued by Denmark's Transport Ministry on Wednesday. 
 
“We believe that the right thing to do is to switch the industry to a lower emissions, rather than to punish the industry and force it outside the country.” 
 
READ ALSO: 
 
Pauck Hansen will now seek to bring airlines, technology companies and government bodies together into the partnership to seek to understand how best to drive the transition. 
 
Transport minister Benny Engelbrecht said he did not believe that the solution was to reduce the number of flights taken by Danes. 
 
“We depend on aviation to be able to get around the world effectively. Therefore, it is imperative that we continue to fly. But we must and must fly greener than we do today,”  transport minister Benny Engelbrecht (S) said in a press release.
 
SAS, which is positioning itself as an aviation industry forerunner in reducing emissions, highlighted the announcement on its Twitter feed.
 
 
Denmark's climate minister made a similar point at a briefing with journalists last week, arguing that reducing the number of flights could not be the solution.
 
He said that the world's population was likely to hit 10 billion by 2050, and that a bigger percentage of those people would be middle income.
 
“More will eat meat, more will have a car, more will have an air conditioner, more will have a fridge and more will fly,” he said. “So no matter what we do to limit, just a little bit, our plane ride. That's not going to solve the problem” 
 
“The only thing that can solve the problem enough for us to stay on the 1.5 degree is to make plane transportation green.”  
 
Simon Pauck Hansen will lead the new public-private partnership. Photo: SAS
 
Pauck Hansen noted that electrical aircraft were a possibility for the future, “but we probably have a few years to go”.
 
In October, he sent a proposal to the Danish Ministry of Transport proposing that a $5 surcharge on flights leaving Danish airports be used to generate up to 300m Danish kroner which would go to research low emissions flight technologies. 
 
“We believe that this is a price that consumers are willing to pay to contribute to the green transition,” he said. 
 
 

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CLIMATE

Central and southern Italy brace for storms and heavy snow

Storms and snowfall are forecast across much of central and southern Italy over the next few days, according to weather reports.

Published: 29 November 2021 15:13 CET
Snow is forecast in the hills of much of central and southern Italy.
Snow is forecast in the hills of much of central and southern Italy. Photo: Miguel MEDINA / AFP

Italy’s Civil Protection Department on Monday issued ‘orange’ alerts for bad weather along Campania’s Tyrrhenian coastline and the western part of Calabria, while Sicily, Basilicata, Lazio, Molise, Umbria, Abruzzo, central-western Sardinia, and the remaining areas of Campania and Calabria are under a lower-level ‘yellow’ weather warning.

The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts is warning Italy’s central-southern regions to prepare for a blast of polar air from the Arctic Circle that will bring heavy snowfall, rain and storms, reports national weather forecaster Il Meteo.

The village of Grotte di Castro in the province of Viterbo, two hours’ drive north of Rome, mountainous parts of Sardinia, and much of the province of Campobasso in the central-eastern region of Molise were already blanketed in snow on Monday morning.

The department is responsible for predicting, preventing and managing emergency events across the country, and uses a green, yellow, orange and red graded colour coding system for weather safety reports.

An orange alert signifies a heavy rainfall, landslide and flood risk, while a yellow alert warns of localised heavy and potentially dangerous rainfall.

The current meteorological conditions mean that snow is expected to reach unusually low altitudes of around 450-500 metres, with flakes already falling thickly on parts of the southern-central Apennines mountain range at 500-700 metres altitude.

The hills of Marche, Abruzzo, Molise, Lazio, Sardinia, Campania, Calabria and Basilicata are likely to see heavy snow around the 500m mark, while areas at an altitude of 1000m or higher will see between 50-60 cm of fresh snow.

Affected parts of the country could see 50-60cm of snowfall.

Affected parts of the country could see 50-60cm of snowfall. Photo: Vincenzo PINTO /AFP

In areas where the snow is unlikely to reach, heavy rains and thunderstorms are anticipated, with rain forecast throughout Sardinia, Campania, Calabria and Lazio, reports Il Meteo.

Strong winds are forecast over the whole country, with the island regions of Sicily and Sardinia facing windspeeds of over 100km/hour and the risk of storm surges, according to the national newspaper La Repubblica.

READ ALSO: Climate crisis: The Italian cities worst affected by flooding and heatwaves

The north of the country, meanwhile, will see sun but low temperatures of below 0°C at night in many areas, including across much of the Po Valley.

While conditions are expected to stabilise on Tuesday, cold currents from Northern Europe are forecast to trigger another wave of bad weather on Wednesday and Thursday, with Sardinia and Italy’s western coastline again at risk of storms and heavy rainfall that will move up towards Lombardy, Emilia Romagna and Veneto in the north.

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