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| How serious are airlines about cutting emissions? (AFP Photo/JOEL SAGET) |
Paris (AFP)
- Airlines have taken steps to reduce their carbon footprints under the gaze of
public opinion, but the pressure of the bottom line means some fly with extra
fuel, boosting emissions of climate-changing greenhouse gases.
As the
highly competitive air travel industry is being pushed to reduce its carbon
emissions -- which it puts at two to three percent of the global total -- the
practice known as fuel tankering has become an acid test for airlines'
commitment to really go green.
In fuel
tankering, an aircraft's tanks are filled sufficiently at the departure airport
to avoid having to take on additional fuel for the return leg at a destination
airport where fuel costs may be higher, or there are supply issues.
According
to a study by Eurocontrol, the practice is a money-saving strategy for airlines
as it outweighs the cost of additional fuel needed to carry the extra weight on
the outbound flight.
"Aviation
is a very competitive market and each airline needs to minimise operating
costs, in order to keep its ticket prices as competitive as possible,"
said the group, an inter-governmental organisation that helps harmonise
regulations in the sector.
With fuel
accounting for up to 25 percent of airlines' operating expenses, "saving
fuel has become a major challenge for aviation", it added.
Eurocontrol
found that in Europe fuel tankering concerns about one in six flights, on
average resulting in an extra 136 kg of fuel burned.
Despite the
additional fuel cost of 75 euros it still results in a net saving of 126 euros
per flight. That saving also includes nine euros for purchasing carbon
allowances for the 428kg of additional CO2 generated.
The report
estimated that in Europe fuel tankering could generate net savings of 265
million euros per year for airlines, while adding 286,000 tonnes of fuel burnt
and 901,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions.
"This
represents about 2,800 round-trips between Paris and New York or the annual
emissions of a European city of 100,000 inhabitants," said the report.
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The airline
industry estimates it accounts for 2-3 percent of global CO2 emissions
(AFP
Photo/ANDREW COWIE)
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Everybody
does it.
After being
called out for fuel tankering by the BBC, British Airways called it a
"common practice across the airline industry" and said that it is
done for "operational, safety and price reasons".
British
Airways said it resorts to fuel tankering for "mainly short-haul
destinations where there are considerable fuel price differences between
European airports".
Willy
Walsh, the head of IAG, British Airway's parent company, acknowledged that the
issue shows that airlines are torn between economic and environmental
imperatives.
"What
we see today is that there is often a conflict between what we do that makes a
commercial and financial sense and the things we should be doing from an
environmental point of view," he told investors at a gathering at the
beginning of November.
Germany's
Lufthansa said it resorts to fuel tankering only exceptionally for operational
reasons because the practice "goes against our goal of reducing carbon
emissions," said a spokesman.
Air France
said it practiced fuel tankering only on "some specific" routes for
economic or organisational reasons.
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Planting
trees to offset emissions (AFP Photo/JOHANNES EISELE)
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Offsets
The airline
industry adopted in 2016 a mechanism called CORSIA to offset any increase in
CO2 emissions from 2020 levels using tree-planting and other schemes that
absorb carbon.
This will
allow the industry to continue to grow to meet rising demand for air travel
without adding any additional carbon on a net basis.
Budget
airline easyJet announced it plans to go further by offsetting emissions from
all flights.
Most
airlines have also undertaken efforts to reduce their emissions such as
optimising flight paths, using electric towing vehicles or reducing the weight
of seats.
But these
efforts are not sufficient believes Andrew Murphy of the non-governmental
organisation Transport and Environment.
"The
increase of aviation emissions and stories like this show that actually the
industry isn't doing enough and actually we can't just rely on the industry to
cut it's own emissions," said Murphy.
"The
equation is super complex" to arrive at a reduction of emissions when the
volume of air traffic is expected to double every 15 to 20 years, said Pascal
Fabre, an air travel expert at the consultancy Alix Partners.
The
situation is even more daunting as airlines need to make money to survive, with
around a dozen going out of business in the past year and a half according to
the International Air Transport Association (IATA).
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