In a significant greenwashing ruling earlier this year, a Dutch court found past advertisements by KLM Royal Dutch Airlines misled consumers and “falsely create the impression that flying with KLM is sustainable”.
The Dutch flag carrier made environmental claims based on “vague and general statements” and painted “too rosy a picture” about the climate impact of sustainable aviation fuels (SAF) and investing in carbon offsets such as reforestation projects.
The environmental benefits of SAF and offsets were, in fact, “marginal”, according to the court.
Soon after the court decision, the European Commission and EU consumer authorities sent letters to 20 European airlines, identifying several types of potentially misleading green claims and “inviting” the airlines to adhere to EU consumer law.
And last month the Environmental Defenders Office lodged a complaint on behalf of Climate Integrity with the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) about potential greenwashing by Qantas Airways.
The Climate Integrity complaint asks the ACCC to investigate whether certain statements made by Qantas about the sustainability of its business and its plan to achieve net zero emissions by 2050 were in breach of Australian consumer law.
At odds with reality
Marketing around the world regarding the sustainability of the aviation industry does seem increasingly at odds with reality.
Climate Action Tracker (CAT) says aviation “remains far off track from a 1.5˚-aligned pathway”, rating the sector’s climate efforts against the Paris Agreement as being “critically insufficient” (see diagram below).
“Despite agreeing on ‘carbon neutral growth’ from 2020 and a ‘long-term aspirational goal of net zero carbon emissions by 2050’, the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) and national governments are not taking appropriate action to reduce emissions from international aviation,” according to CAT.
Too many of these goals are premised on offsetting the sector’s CO2 emissions rather than real emission reductions, and they do not address the sector’s non-CO2 climate impacts, CAT said.
Based on ICAO’s projections, CAT estimates that without strong action, emissions from international aviation will double or even triple between 2019 and 2050.
So is all the talk about SAF mainly greenwash?
The International Air Transport Association (IATA) recently announced its projections for a tripling of Sustainable Aviation Fuels (SAF) production in 2024 to 1.9 billion litres (1.5 million tonnes) were “on track”.
But IATA, which represents some 330 airlines, admits “this would account for only 0.53 per cent of the global aviation sector’s fuels need in 2024”.
Unfortunately IATA is relying on SAF to deliver about two-thirds of the aviation sector’s emission reductions (see illustration below).
The international aviation sector has set an ambition to achieve a 5 per cent reduction in CO2 emissions reduction from SAF by 2030.
But IATA says to achieve this around 27 per cent of all expected renewable fuel production capacity available in 2030 would need to be SAF. Currently, it is just 3 per cent as aviation competes with other industries for renewable fuel.
Just 0.2 per cent
So where does Qantas sit here?
In its 2024 Sustainability Report the airline says “While our current SAF use represents approximately 0.2 per cent of our total fuel consumption, our aim is to progressively move up to approximately three per cent over the next couple of years subject to SAF being available in the cost advantaged ports to which we fly, primarily the US”.
The report says “the remainder of the 10 per cent by 2030, is planned to be acquired in the back end of the decade to provide sufficient time for the projects under development to come on line”.
One such project would be Crysalis Biosciences Inc’s planned renovation of a closed ethanol plant in Illinois to produce SAF. The SAFFA fund – where Qantas is an investor alongside Airbus, Air France-KLM and others – recently invested in Crysalis.
The graph below shows Qantas’ actual emissions rising until at least 2030 and highlights the significant role carbon offsets are expected to play in reducing the airlines’ ‘net emissions’.
In its 2024 Stewardship Report, the Australian Council of Superannuation Investors (ACSI) says given the importance of offsets to Qantas’ climate transition plan, it would like to see the company “continue to develop disclosures covering assessment of offset integrity and the quantity of offsets acquired and retired”.
ACSI says “this will be an ongoing focus of engagement along with Qantas’ SAF goals and fleet renewal program”.
Climate Integrity says environmental and sustainability claims underpinned by carbon offsetting “rely on a false equivalency that one tonne of CO2 sequestered is equal to one tonne of CO2 emitted by the aviation industry’s practices”.
The Australian Government only requires offset projects to fulfil a “permanence obligation” to maintain carbon stored or sequestered by a project for either 25 or 100 years.
If carbon stored in vegetation or soil as part of an offset project is later released back into the atmosphere this, of course, reverses the environmental benefit of the project.
However, the offset project has effectively allowed more carbon (e.g. jet fuel) to be burned than would otherwise been the case.
For each tonne of carbon burned and released into the atmosphere, around 40 per cent remains after 100 years, 20-25 per cent after 1,000 years and 20 per cent after 10,000 years, according to Climate Analytics.
Growth for growth’s sake
Airlines around the world are all focussed on growing passenger numbers and revenue. Even IATA’s downside risk scenario in Chart 14 below sees only continual growth to 2050.
So it would be heretical for any of them to suggest the obvious solution – ‘demand management’ through reducing/restricting flight numbers and flight lengths.
Climate Integrity claims “Qantas and others in the aviation industry are intentionally using misleading sustainability language and imagery to protect the social licence of aviation to grow”.
It argues SAFs are “greenwash by name” and “relying on their potential future scale-up cannot come at the expense of solutions that are ready to go now – such as demand management”.
Four years ago when IATA launched Fly Net Zero, a commitment of airlines to achieve net zero carbon by 2050, it hoped it could do away with ‘business as usual (BAU)’ emissions but keep BAU passenger traffic growth.
However, demand management – – is now being talked about more in aviation circles.
Offsets a barrier
The Netherlands Aerospace Centre (NLR) and research institute CE Delft were commissioned by Amsterdam Airport Schiphol to advise on what needs to be done to bring Schiphol’s CO₂ emissions in line with the Paris Agreement. (Schiphol’s scope 3 emissions cover departing aircraft and include emissions during the entire flight to any destination worldwide),
The research showed that at least a 30 per cent CO2 reduction when compared to 2019 is needed for Schiphol and European aviation to be on track in 2030.
Delft thinks offsets are “a barrier to useful climate action in aviation” and so the Schiphol studies do not budget for any mitigation contribution from carbon offsets or credits.
Delft said, “financial resources dedicated to creating offsets cannot be used for measures leading to emission reductions in aviation, such as the development of SAF”.
“Current in-sector decarbonisation measures, excluding offsetting, are not enough to meet Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) derived carbon budgets compatible with 1.5˚C global warming for Schiphol.
“Significant demand management measures, to be implemented by 2030 at the latest, seem the only viable way out. Demand in flights beyond a certain distance could be targeted in particular,” according to Delft.
At Schiphol, only about 15 per cent of flights are intercontinental (long distance), but they account for 75 per cent of CO2, so demand management measures targeting these long-distance flights would be more effective than measures reducing total demand, NLR says.
The NLR report looked at various scenarios, such as the one below that assumes a 44 per cent cut in emissions. Under this scenario, a 30 per cent reduction in European fights and 31 per cent cut in intercontinental (ICA) flights are required.
The Delft report says “technological breakthroughs will come too late and SAF production has limits. Demand management measures are necessary to align the aviation sector with the goals of the Paris Agreement”.
In discussing how much of the remaining carbon budgets should be allocated to global and Dutch aviation, Delft noted that “an economic approach” to decarbonisation would see relatively more of the budget given to aviation because it is a ‘costly to abate’ sector.
“However, aviation is not a basic need and for many people a luxury product. One might also argue that aviation has to follow the same or even a more restrictive path than other sectors,” Delft said.
A recent report by the University of Cambridge’s Aviation Impact Accelerator said implementing demand management would be politically challenging and that “in industrialised countries, significant restrictions would need to focus on frequent fliers to gain public acceptance”.
One can imagine the collective groan in the Qantas Chairman’s Lounge.
