After receiving huge government bailouts for staying grounded during the coronavirus pandemic, airlines are now pulling out all the stops to persuade people back into flying. But now that customers are more environmentally concerned and eco-savvy than ever, the industry responsible for 2-3% of the world’s carbon emissions has become ever more creative, clouded and confounding in their green claims.
We commissioned a study to look at the actions taken by the eight major European airlines to reduce their environmental impact, to understand the scale and quality of their efforts.
October 2022
Commissioned by Carbon Market Watch
Conducted by the Öko-Institute
The greenwashing of aviation is especially dangerous at a time when emissions reductions are crucial for staying within 1.5C of warming, the maximum global temperature change that the planet can withstand without causing widespread destabilisation. By tricking consumers into thinking that they can fly with minimal consequence, airlines are showing a disregard for the safety and wellbeing of current and future generations.
This report strongly demonstrates that airlines cannot be trusted to take sufficient voluntary action in covering the damage caused by their profits-over-planet nonchalance. The only option now is for governments to intervene and start properly regulating airline emissions.
The information in this table was released in October 2022
Airline | All emissions offset? | Provided enough information for voluntary climate action to reliably assessed? | Customer offsetting based on CO2 and non CO2 emissions? | Estimated average offset cost of a tonne of CO2 | Tonnes of CO2 offset between 2019-2021 (estimates made from limited data) | Provided evidence of offsets retired? | Low-quality offsetting projects included in portfolio | ||
Paid by customer | Paid by airline | ||||||||
Air France | ✘ | ✘ | ✘ | €30 | €8 | 500,000 | ✔︎ | ✔︎ | |
British Airways | ✘ | ✘ | ✔︎ | €12 | - | 365,000 | ✘ | ✔︎ | |
EasyJet | ✔︎ | ✔︎ | ✔︎ | - | €4 | 5,269,476 | ✔︎ | ✔︎ | |
KLM | ✘ | ✘ | ✘ | €16 | - | 203,000 | ✔︎ | ✔︎ | |
Lufthansa | ✘ | ✘ | ✘ | €17 | - | 150,060 | ✘ | ✔︎ | |
Ryanair | ✘ | ✘ | ✘ | €28 | - | 105,855 | ✘ | ✔︎ | |
SAS | ✘ | ✘ | ✘ | - | - | 2,400,000 | ✘ | - | |
Wizz Air | ✘ | ✘ | ✔︎ | €9 | - | 105 | ✘ | ✔︎ |
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