This figure is challenged by many in the industry who point to the low take-up of British Airways' service enabling passengers to offset their flight's carbon emissions.
Announced with great fanfare on Monday and on BBC2's Horizon last night, the prize offers the public the chance to decide which of six major problems faced by the world today — paralysis, flight without carbon emissions, antibiotic resistance, dementia and the supply of water and food — should be the focus of a £10m competition to find a solution.
Black has several credits to his name on the show, including "First Flight" and "Carbon Creek".
The flight-related carbon footprint of scientists in a Norwegian climate research institute, for example, is around 4.5 tonnes of carbon per person per year.
This study investigates the idea that people's willingness to offset flight-related carbon emissions is a function of the collective participation rate, which can be regarded as a social norm, towards carbon offsetting.
"By offering a comparative lower carbon flight search, based on the carbon efficiency of different airlines, we are able to offer a practical guide to relative carbon travel," says company founder, Justin Francis.
Travelers who buy offsets through Expedia and its partner TerraPass, a Web-based for-profit company in Menlo Park, Calif., for a medium or long-haul flight get a "Carbon Balanced Flyer" luggage tag.
vote #water #longitudeprize to create cheap env #sustainable #desalination tech May 19 , 2014Mark Sanders (@77A) #Longitudeprize is GO !!: £10m prize: http://t.co/vL0KjtNNQ4 or Low cost water desalination interesting but zero carbon flight most fun IMHO May 19 , 201411.26am BST Tony Hall rounds things off, saying he's only managed to get half way through his locust.
Mr Davey said that zero carbon flight is imaginable.
The measurement apparatus includes an electrostatic deflection analyzer for energy per charge measurement (E/q), a time-of-flight section utilizing carbon foils and microchannel plate detectors for time of flight measurement (TOF), and solid-state detectors for energy measurement (E).
