Industry seeks energy cost cuts

Farnborough: Reeling from high oil prices and under pressure to curb pollution, the aviation industry flaunted a green agenda under tightened security amid fears of environmentalist protests at the Farnborough Air Show on Wednesday.

The heads of Airbus and the airplane division of Boeing set aside rivalries over dwindling jet orders and a trade row over subsidies to share a platform on sustainable aviation on the third day of the show.

The world's largest showcase for the aerospace industry takes place against the backdrop of oil prices which have given the industry an incentive to cut fuel and save costs.

Farnborough has been bombarded this year with expensively produced posters promoting air travel as the greenest way of crossing the globe.

The opening of a sustainability conference organised by show was briefly marred by the deafening roar of a Boeing F/A-18F Super Hornet taking off in a reek of fumes. "That's not an environmentally-friendly aircraft", Airbus chief executive Tom Enders quipped.

The aviation industry is desperate to cut the amount of fuel burned, by reducing weight with new composite materials or making a new generation of engines, in order to prop up orders as well as to deter greater regulation.

But academics say making aviation carbon-neutral is some way off, as traffic grows faster than even the most optimistic forecasts of average annual increases in efficiency. "The drive for sustainable development through efficiencies is a genuine one, but it has to match growth. In the short term they won't be able to do that," said Paul Hooper, senior lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University.