• About
    • Which Energy Mix is this?
  • Climate News Network Archive
  • Contact
Celebrating our 1,000th edition. The climate news you need
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
No Result
View All Result
  FEATURED
Ex-Fossil Workers Convert Old Oilfields to Solar Farms After ‘Rapid Upskilling’ in Alberta June 29, 2022
London Becomes Biggest City to Sign Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty June 29, 2022
G7 Miss ‘Golden Opportunity’, Walk Back Pledge to Cut International Fossil Finance June 29, 2022
Soaring Fertilizer Prices Could Deliver ‘Silver Lining’ For Emissions, But Farmers Struggle to Limit Use June 26, 2022
BREAKING: UN Nature Summit, the ‘Paris Conference for Biodiversity’, Moves to Montreal in December June 19, 2022
Next
Prev
Home Demand & Distribution Air & Marine

Big Seven European Airlines Lag on Reducing Sky-High Emissions: Report

June 12, 2022
Reading time: 4 minutes
Primary Author: Compiled by Gaye Taylor

stux / Pixabay

stux / Pixabay

12
SHARES
 

With pressure continuing to mount on the aviation industry to get serious about its sizable carbon footprint, self-interested greenwashing remains the order of the day for many of the world’s major carriers, particularly European ones.

Commissioned by Greenpeace, a report by Observatorio RSC found that Europe’s seven largest airlines—Lufthansa, Air France-KLM, IAG (which represents Iberian Airlines and Aer Lingus), Ireland’s Ryanair, the UK’s easyJet, Scandinavia’s SAS, and TAP Air Portugal—are showing little sincere commitment to climate action, with corporate self-interest trumping responsibility to help keep global heating within livable bounds.

That responsibility is considerable. “Aviation was Europe’s second-largest contributor of transport emissions in 2017,” reports Bloomberg Green, adding that in 2019, the seven airlines “were responsible for emissions equivalent to the annual carbon footprint of Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Finland combined.” 

Observatorio used publicly available information on the airlines’ environmental track records between 2018 and 2020 to rank them on a range of indicators including environmental policies, greenhouse gas emissions and targets, and reporting of direct and indirect emissions. They secured an abysmal average of 32 points out of 100, with none scoring above 50.

While company spin doctors have picked up on the discourse of decarbonization, as Bloomberg puts it, the airlines examined in the report are setting the rules and the deadlines, and “only to the extent that they can make this process functional to their interests,” say the report authors.

Sustainable aviation fuels (SAF) and carbon offsets are the Big Seven’s oft-cited fig leaves du jour. Other options, like modernizing aircrafts and flying less, both of which would involve a significant hit to profits, are hardly mentioned.

But sustainable fuels remain prohibitively expensive, with the supply decidedly thin on the ground.

With the right policies and support, “sustainable aviation fuels could represent up to 65% of the abatement needed to reach net-zero,” the International Air Transportation Association (IATA) told Bloomberg, with production accelerating from just 100 million litres last year to more than 5 billion by 2025.

Even as it asks for policy and support to advance SAF production, however, IATA is lobbying to weaken the European Commission’s sustainable aviation fuels (SAF) proposal, ReFuelEU.

An April report by Transport & Environment (T&E) found that IATA, working on behalf of four EU legacy carriers (Air France, Lufthansa, Iberia, and Aer Lingus), was looking to weaken ReFuelEU to apply only to flights within the EU, a “disastrous” change which would leave a “mere 28% of emissions from flights departing from Europe” covered by the SAF mandate, down from 92% as ReFuelEU is currently written.

T&E also found IAG lobbying to remove a sub-mandate for e-kerosene, a fuel that T&E describes as “the only fuel capable of being scaled up to meet the sector’s enormous fuel demands.”

In a separate report detailing the promise of e-kerosene, produced by combining green hydrogen with carbon dioxide, T&E forecasts that the amount of the fuel available for airlines could jump significantly by 2025 with the right incentives for its development.

Not everyone in the industry is following IAG in its efforts to ground synthetic fuels like e-kerosene, however. Australia’s Qantas, which has committed to invest US$35 million towards the development of SAFs, is predicting that so-called “power-to-liquid” technology “may prove the ‘nirvana’ for sustainable aviation,” reports the Financial Times.

Remarking on large volume of renewable energy that would be required to create e-fuels, Qantas chief sustainability officer Andrew Parker told the Times that Australia is ideally positioned to become a “power-to-liquid” technology powerhouse given its boundless resources of sun and wind, as well as the vast open spaces available to build wind and solar farms.

While it has pledged to make SAFs 10% of its fuel mixture by 2030, and roughly 60% by 2050, Qantas will still turn to offsets to make up the difference on its emissions targets—at least on paper.

Parker confirmed that offsets “will certainly be a very large element of our 2030 commitment,” adding that “we do not see a path to 2050 without carbon offsetting.” 

The EU’s top seven carriers also remain keen on offsets. However, the Observatorio RSC report raised flags about their approach to reporting those deals, commenting that “in some cases, airlines seem to have little control over projects at source.”  



in Carbon Levels & Measurement, Climate Denial & Greenwashing, Climate News Network, Ending Emissions, Finance & Investment, International Agencies & Studies, Legal & Regulatory, UK & Europe

The latest climate news and analysis, direct to your inbox

Subscribe

Related Posts

Keith Hirsche
Jobs & Training

Ex-Fossil Workers Convert Old Oilfields to Solar Farms After ‘Rapid Upskilling’ in Alberta

June 29, 2022
422
London Eye UK England
Cities & Communities

London Becomes Biggest City to Sign Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty

June 29, 2022
131
Number 10/flickr
International Agencies & Studies

G7 Miss ‘Golden Opportunity’, Walk Back Pledge to Cut International Fossil Finance

June 29, 2022
152

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

I agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy.

Trending Stories

François GOGLINS/wikimedia commons

Corrosion Problem Shutters Half of France’s Nuclear Reactors

June 29, 2022
227
Keith Hirsche

Ex-Fossil Workers Convert Old Oilfields to Solar Farms After ‘Rapid Upskilling’ in Alberta

June 29, 2022
422
Danielle Scott/flickr

Advocate Urges Ottawa to Intervene Before Ontario Builds Highway 413

June 29, 2022
130
David/flickr

U.S. Supreme Court Expected to Gut Emission Controls as Climate Scientists Petition for Plan B

June 26, 2022
1.2k
Number 10/flickr

G7 Miss ‘Golden Opportunity’, Walk Back Pledge to Cut International Fossil Finance

June 29, 2022
152
London Eye UK England

London Becomes Biggest City to Sign Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty

June 29, 2022
131

Recent Posts

AJEL / Pixabay

Windfall Tax on Food, Fossil, Pharma Giants Would Raise $490B to Solve ‘Catastrophic’ Food Crisis: Oxfam

June 29, 2022
58
futureatlas.com/flickr

Ottawa Demands Deeper Fuel Emissions Cuts, Offers Fossils a Double-Dip on Tax Breaks

June 29, 2022
78
Province of B.C./flickr

Comox Joins Municipalities Seeking Ban on New Gas Stations

June 29, 2022
78
/Piqsels

Refocus Agriculture Spending to Cut Emissions, Boost Productivity, OECD Urges Governments

June 29, 2022
29
Jimmy Emerson, DVM/flickr

Public Vigilance Key to Protecting Greenbelts for Climate Resilience, Report Finds

June 29, 2022
36
Miguel V/Wikimedia Commons

Forests Fall Short of Full Carbon Storage Potential, Study Finds

June 29, 2022
64
Next Post
TAFE SA TONSLEY/Flickr

EU Needs 400 GW of Solar and Wind Per Year to Hit 1.5°C, Study Says

The Energy Mix

Copyright 2022 © Smarter Shift Inc. and Energy Mix Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

Navigate Site

  • About
  • Contact
  • Privacy Policy and Copyright
  • Cookie Policy

Follow Us

No Result
View All Result
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities

Copyright 2022 © Smarter Shift Inc. and Energy Mix Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

Manage Cookie Consent
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behaviour or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes. The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
Manage options Manage services Manage vendors Read more about these purposes
View preferences
{title} {title} {title}