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Bloomberg
Europe’s leading airlines are misleading consumers with claims that they can fly guilt-free by using carbon offsets to neutralise the environmental impact of air travel, according to a new report by the non-profit Carbon Market Watch.
A temporary dip during the Covid-19 pandemic aside, airline emissions have been steadily rising for the past two decades and, left unchecked, could potentially triple by 2050. Globally, the industry generates roughly one billion tons of CO2 per year — comparable to the emissions of Japan, the world’s third-largest economy.
To assuage travellers’ conscience, airlines have turned to carbon offsets, marketing their corporate investments and encouraging passengers to purchase offsets to cover their own flights. But these voluntary efforts don’t work, Carbon Market Watch said, because the carriers are relying on cheap, poor quality offsets that can’t be guaranteed to reduce emissions elsewhere.
The conclusions are based on a study by research firm Öko-Institut, that assessed the scale and quality of the emissions reduction policies from May to July of the eight largest airlines in Europe, collectively responsible for over half of the total CO2 emissions of the EU aviation sector in 2019: Air France, British Airways, Easyjet, KLM, Lufthansa, Ryanair, SAS and Wizz Air.
The study found that nearly all the airlines assessed rely on offsets from cheap forestry projects in developing countries, efforts that are vulnerable over the long term. Trees can burn, die or be cut down if policies change, reversing their carbon storage, and might not around long enough to truly compensate for the carbon emitted.
Aviation emissions are regulated under the EU’s emissions trading system, which is currently under review, and Carbon Market Watch says the EU should expand its scope to cover all flights departing and arriving in the European Economic Area, rather than just those within the zone. The EU should also require “clear and complete†disclosures from airlines on their carbon offset purchases and other voluntary climate action, ban misleading advertisements and issue guidance on how to make informative claims, the non-profit said.