TINOS, GREECE : Some readers, especially those in the northern hemisphere, may be feeling “flight shame” this summer. How can they justify jetting on holiday when temperatures are soaring across Europe, America and China? I am acutely aware of this, working from home in Greece where forest fires have been raging.
Guilt is useful if it provokes action. In this case, the main solution is not for individuals to stop flying voluntarily. It is to transform the airline industry so that it doesn’t fry the planet. A key part would be to tax aviation fuel, with the richest countries and the most frequent flyers bearing the biggest burden.
Aviation isn’t the planet’s biggest polluter. Nevertheless, aircraft are responsible for about 4% of global warming from carbon emissions and the vapour trails they leave behind in the sky. What’s more, the industry is growing fast. Without evasive action, it will contribute an even bigger portion of future increases in the global temperature.
New types of planes powered by electric batteries or hydrogen would help. But they won’t be able to do much of the job until the middle of the century. A more viable short-term option is to run planes on sustainable aviation fuels (SAF). Even so the cheapest of these, biofuel, still costs about two to three times as much as kerosene, the traditional jet fuel. Biofuel uses things like cooking oil waste as its feedstock. But it’s not possible to scale it up to replace all jet fuel.
Synthetic fuel, such as e-kerosene made from green hydrogen, doesn’t suffer from that problem. But it is even more expensive, costing seven to ten times the price of conventional jet fuel. The process of creating green hydrogen by electrolysing water with renewable energy and then combining it with carbon dioxide is also inherently complex. As fuel accounts for around 30% of airlines’ costs the industry isn’t going to use much SAF voluntarily.
SAF-TRACK
There are three ways to get the industry to switch. The first is to subsidise sustainable fuels, as the U.S. government is doing with its SAF Grand Challenge to support research, development and early deployment of new technologies. That could help kickstart the industry.
But synthetic fuels will still probably be 1.5-2.5 times the price of traditional fuels by the middle of the century. Even rich governments won’t keep bridging the gap with subsidies for several decades.
A second solution is to force airlines to use SAF. The European Union, for example, is requiring 6% of fuel made available at EU airports to be SAF by 2030; 1.2% of the fuel must be synthetic. But these are still small quantities.
The third option is to tax either the kerosene that airlines burn or the emissions they spew out into the atmosphere. This would push up the price of conventional fuel, narrowing the gap with SAF.
So far only the EU, United Kingdom and some smaller countries are doing this via emissions trading schemes (ETS). These require airlines to get permits for every tonne of carbon they emit on flights within Europe. These currently cost about 90 euros per tonne.
But even the EU’s efforts are limited. Back in 2012 the bloc wanted to include flights leaving Europe in the scheme but backed down when countries including China and the United States objected. This is one reason that the EU is under-taxing the airline industry by 26 billion euros a year, according to the non-profit group Transport and Environment.
FREQUENT FLYERS
The world’s governments could, in theory, impose a global tax on kerosene via the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), the United Nations agency that regulates the industry. They started such a process to tax shipping emissions via that industry’s equivalent UN agency earlier this month.
But so far there’s little momentum to adopt a similar approach to airlines. French President Emmanuel Macron is one of the few leaders calling for a global tax.
There are multiple blockages. One is that the United States hasn’t yet imposed carbon taxes on any industry. Another is that developing countries don’t see why their airlines should pay up for emissions when their populations don’t fly much and have contributed relatively little to climate damage.
The ICAO has agreed a carbon offset scheme, which takes full effect in 2027. This requires airlines to compensate for the carbon they emit above recent levels by putting money into projects that cut emissions in other industries. But this is unlikely to make much difference, not least because the price of offsets is expected to be a fraction of the cost of the EU’s ETS permits.
The ICAO did last year agree on an “aspirational” long-term goal of cutting the industry’s emissions to zero by 2050 on a net basis. If governments are serious, they will need a plan to hit this target.
To work, the plan would need to channel Robin Hood, the legendary English outlaw who stole from the rich to give to the poor. Airlines operating in wealthy countries will either have to pay higher taxes than their rivals in less-developed parts of the world, or rich governments will need to give a big chunk of the taxes they raise to poor countries.
Another possibility is for those passengers who fly the most, the bulk of whom are in rich countries, to pay a “frequent flyer levy” which rises the more often they travel by air. The International Council on Clean Transportation has proposed a plan to raise $121 billion a year with such a scheme. The levy would be set at zero for a traveller’s first flight in a year, rising to $177 for their twentieth trip.
Rich countries might baulk. But they should realise that taxing kerosene would not only narrow the gap with more sustainable fuels, but would also provide revenue to fund subsidies to close it further. What’s more, it’s worth the developed world giving some of this money to poor countries as part of a global deal rather than putting its own aviation industry at a competitive disadvantage.
Cracking this problem will be a long haul. Readers who feel flight shame could start by making it clear they would be happy to pay higher levies the more they fly.