Lufthansa, if you listen to the press release it’s just put out, has ambitious goals. Greenbang hoped that such goals included flying underground in an aircraft the size of a mango: a very ambitious goal, you might say, and one that would shut up those axiom spouting numbskulls that claim there’s no such word as can’t. Yes, there is. It’s in the dictionary.

But no, Lufthansa is not that ambitious, but ambitious nonetheless. It’s whipped the covers off a series of guidelines designed to make the whole business of flying a little less painful on the environment, and all to be delivered by 2020.

And here they are in all their full flighty glory:

· Lufthansa expressly supports the IATA fuel-efficiency target and intends to reduce its CO2 emissions per flown kilometer by 25 per cent by 2020 against the level in 2006.

· Lufthansa supports the ACARE target of reducing nitrogen oxide emissions by 80 per cent by 2020 compared with the level in the year 2000.

· Lufthansa intends to increase the amount of bio-fuel admixed with conventional kerosene up to ten per cent by 2020.

· Lufthansa supports ecologically-oriented incentive systems, which rest on an economic and revenue-neutral basis, e.g. emission-based landing fees, which were introduced earlier this year at Frankfurt and Munich Airports.

· Lufthansa will continue to advocate within international organizations a practicable solution for including air traffic in emissions trading.

· Lufthansa will further pursue diverse noise abatement measures and is cooperating in related research projects designed to achieve the ACARE objective of halving noise emissions by 2020.

Tags: airline, biofuel, emissions, fuel, lufthansa, noise