Bill Gates joins Blackstone in bid to buy British private jet services firm

Bill Gates has joined a £3bn bidding war to buy the world’s largest private jet services company just as he prepares to publish his new book How to Avoid a Climate Disaster. Cascade Investment, the fund that manages much of Gates’s $134bn personal fortune, announced on Friday it had teamed up with US private equity firm Blackstone in a bid for the British firm Signature Aviation.

According to a study by academics at Lund University, Gates is one of the world’s biggest “super-emitters” due to his regular private jet travel. He took 59 flights in one year travelling more than 200,000 miles, according to the report, which estimated that Gates’ private jet travel emitted about 1,600 tonnes of carbon dioxide.

— source theguardian.com | 9 Jan 2021

Nullius in verba

---

Advertisement

1% of people cause half of global aviation emissions

Frequent-flying “super emitters” who represent just 1% of the world’s population caused half of aviation’s carbon emissions in 2018, according to a study. Airlines produced a billion tonnes of CO2 and benefited from a $100bn (£75bn) subsidy by not paying for the climate damage they caused, the researchers estimated. The analysis draws together data to give the clearest global picture of the impact of frequent fliers. Only 11% of the world’s population took a flight in 2018 and 4% flew abroad. US air passengers have by far the biggest carbon footprint among rich countries. Its aviation emissions are bigger than the next 10 countries combined, including the UK, Japan, Germany and Australia, the study reports.

— source theguardian.com | 17 Nov 2020

Nullius in verba

---

2/3 of aviation climate impact due to emissions other than CO2

Aviation accounts for 3.5% of the human-made climate impact; two-thirds of this impact are caused by emissions other than CO2, according to a new study by researchers in Europe and the US. The study was published in the journal Atmospheric Environment. In addition to CO2, air traffic causes condensation trails and nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions from the combustion of the airplane’s fuel. Seen together, the climate impact of these two factors is bigger than that of the sector’s carbon emissions.

— source greencarcongress.com | 06 Sep 2020

Nullius in verba

---