Airlines would love you to believe that simply checking a box on the internet can erase the environmental impact of jetting across the Atlantic. Yet unfortunately for the companies, the Kardashians, and the climate, it’s not true.
Carbon offsets have become an increasingly popular way for polluting industries to greenwash their images. And, amid growing public awareness of just how fossil fuel-intensive air travel is, airlines have gotten in on the action. However, the offsets that at least eight of the largest European airlines offer are ineffective and misleading, according to an independent research report from the German non-profit Öko-Institut.
The report was commissioned by the non-profit environmental think tank Carbon Market Watch and published Monday. In it, analysts assessed the offset programs of Ryanair, EasyJet, Lufthansa, British Airways, Air France, KLM, Wizz Air, and SAS Airlines — which were collectively responsible for about half of the total emissions produced by the European aviation sector in 2019.
One of the biggest takeaways: there’s a pervasive lack of transparency surrounding airline offset data, which makes it really challenging to accurately evaluate companies’ climate claims. However, even from what the Öko-Institut researchers were able to find, things aren’t looking great.
Airlines rely mostly on cheap and low-quality carbon credit purchases, through things like tree-planting and forestry projects in developing countries. These projects often end up being impermanent due to failure, fires, drought, or logging and, ultimately, do little to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store it long-term.
The cost companies are paying for these offsets (between €4 and €30 per metric ton of CO2) is much less than the projected cost of actually reducing their own emissions in the first place. Airlines appear to be opting for the cheaper option when it comes to attempting to address their role in climate change. These companies could be researching more sustainable fuels, more efficient jet engines, or streamlining and reducing their total number of flights. But instead, they’re still pumping out greenhouse gases and hoping to delete the emissions after the fact.
Worse still, by advertising their offset efforts, airlines are perpetuating a false idea that customers can fly emissions-free. “Voluntary use of carbon credits to offset the emissions of the aviation sector may suggest to customers that it is possible to fly in a ‘carbon neutral’ manner,” wrote the report authors. “Which could lead to an increase in passenger air traffic at exactly the time when the scientific community is urging us all to fly less.”
And airline emissions have been increasing sharply over the past decade. Between 2013 and 2018 the C02 output from commercial flights went up by more than 30%.
The new study goes on to conclude that offsetting “may be a convenient solution,” that functions more as a marketing ploy than an effective means of decarbonizing aviation.
Out of all eight airlines assessed, only EasyJet seems to be headed in the right direction. The company aims to make all of its flights carbon-neutral and doesn’t require any sort of customer opt-in to offset emissions. As a result, EasyJet reported offsetting millions more tons of GHGs in both 2019 and 2020 than its next closest green competitor, SAS. Granted, many of these were still via those poor quality, likely ineffective forestry credit purchases.
EasyJet was also just one of three airlines to include potent, polluting water vapour and greenhouse gasses other than carbon dioxide in its emissions calculations, which the airline industry has lobbied to have us ignore. Moreover, EasyJet was the only company to voluntarily provide enough information on its climate action programs for proper analysis.
But finally, and most importantly, Easy Jet is actually the winner of the airline climate race because it’s set to abandon the offset idea altogether. The airline announced earlier this year that it would soon be scrapping its offset program in favour of work to direct cut emissions. EasyJet has said it’s planning to shift focus to investing in more sustainable aircraft, better fuels, and other operating improvements.
And to make a dent in commercial aviation’s climate footprint, which amounts to about 4% of the human-induced total, Carbon Market Watch suggested that other airlines will need to follow EasyJet’s lead. “Airlines urgently need to implement dramatic reductions in their own emissions rather than paying others to do so,” the environmental advocacy group said.
But as long as the offset option exists, most companies are likely to continue opting for the easy way (instead of the EasyJet) out, emphasised CMW. “The availability of this cheaper and more convenient alternative, which requires no changes to the way they work or business model, could end up delaying or derailing more serious action.”