The green syndrome is spreading hard and fast across the planet and it is nice to know that the aviation industry has taken it up too in the past few months. We have seen how the city of brotherly love is going green with its airport and now it is the turn of San Francisco to add a little green tinge. While one can be dismissive about this being too little, the fact is that at the end of the day every little drop adds up in to something substantial or so we hope.
San Francisco International Airport approved a set of novel and innovative guidelines for the lease agreements between the airport and the car-rental companies that do business there. Under those guidelines, which will take effect next year once they’re approved by the city’s Board of Supervisors, airport rental car companies will be offered an incentive to insure that at least 15% of their rental vehicles meet an EPA SmartWay rating of 17 or better. And rental-car customers will get a $15 credit if their rental-car of choice has a SmartWay score of 18 or higher.
This is good news for all those frequent fliers from the San Francisco International Airport as you get that extra $15 incentive for your green efforts. I have always believed that the authorities must initially motivate people to go green and soon they will do it all by themselves. The plan of action in this seems to be exactly that. Here is how it exactly works. SmartWay is a score calculated by combining the EPA’s air-pollution and greenhouse-gas test scores for a given vehicle. To gain SmartWay classification, each vehicle must score at least 13, and each of the scores, rated on a scale of one to 10, must be six or more.
For example, the Prius scores a 9.5 in EPA air-pollution testing, and a 10 for greenhouse gas emissions. So it’s SmartWay score is 19.5. So it is time the folks in the bay area got used to some really green rides that could save them a bit of green. Keep scoring those points.
