Several of Europe's largest airlines offer consumers to offset their emissions, but a new report undermines the promises.
”This bad practice must end,” says expert Daniele Rao to Bloomberg.
”Make your flight carbon neutral.” Lufthansa offers this to its customers, including by offering climate compensation credits.
And they are far from alone. According to a new report from the organization Carbon Market Watch, CMW, Air France, British Airways, Easyjet, KLM, Ryanair and Wizz Air also sell various types of carbon offsets (SAS recently announced that they stop).
However, the scheme has been heavily criticized by CMW, which points out that many of the companies are buying cheap, low-quality offset credits. This includes vulnerable forest projects in developing countries, where trees are at high risk of burning, dying or being cut down, and thus do not compensate for emissions.
The price tag for a ton of carbon dioxide also varies greatly between different companies, from 9 to 30 euros. Some consumers also pay four times more than the airline does for compensation, according to the report. One of the companies pays only four euros, equivalent to just over 40 kronor, to compensate for one ton. This can be compared, for example, to the emission rights price for the same amount, which is currently around 766 kronor.
”While not paying for their emissions, airlines are sending misleading messages about climate neutrality to consumers based on the purchase of low-quality climate compensation,” says Daniele Rao, an expert on aviation's climate transition at CMW.
Source: DI.SE
