The Government will monitor airlines’ plans to reduce their CO ₂ emissions

The government will tighten its watch on airlines’ plans to reduce CO2 emissions while opening the door to increasing the tax burden on the sector. In line with countries such as the Netherlands, France, Belgium or Germany, which are announcing measures to discourage air transport by approving tax increases, the Minister for the Ecological Transition, Teresa Ribera, said that applying more taxes to the plane is “an interesting and reasonable proposal”, since “those who travel in that medium have more resources”.

Although the approval of a new aviation tax has hardly been included in the environmental taxation debate, the truth is that the Executive does want to increase controls on the air sector to ensure that it takes the necessary measures to compensate and reduce the emissions generated by its activity.

Thus, the latest draft of the Law on Climate Change and Energy Transition states that the Executive will establish the requirements that the strategic environmental sustainability plans of the airlines, Aena and Enaire must implement to “contribute to the objectives in terms of energy and climate”. “The requirements of operational energy audits and strategic environmental sustainability plans will be established for airlines, airport managers and air traffic service providers (…) must implement as a measure to identify opportunities for improvement aimed at reducing emissions and implement their contribution to energy and climate objectives,” says the fourth additional provision of the law. The requirements will be set by order of the Minister of Transport after informing the Ministry for Ecological Transition.

The requirements will be set by order of the Minister of Transport prior informing the Ministry for Ecological Transition

In this line, the law promoted by the Executive of Pedro Sánchez places special emphasis on the promotion of sustainable alternative fuels in air transport. An area in which groups such as IAG or easyJet are already working although from the sector they assure that it will be very difficult for this type of fuels to cover more than 10% of the needs of a large company.

For example, the Spanish-British holding company plans to invest 400 million euros in the development of sustainable fuels for aviation over the next 20 years and, in a first phase, has signed an alliance with the company Velocys to build a domestic waste recycling plant for its conversion into aviation fuel that generates 70% less CO2 emissions than that of fossil origin.

Although the sector assures that there is still no viable alternative for commercial aviation to kerosene of fossil origin, the Executive wants to establish “annual objectives for the supply of biofuels in air transport” with special emphasis on advanced biofuels and other renewable fuels of non-biological origin. In this line, it is committed to promoting renewable gases, including biogas, biomethane, hydrogen and other alternatives.

“Biofuels must comply with the sustainability criteria defined by European and national regulations on biofuels and other renewable fuels of non-biological origin,” the draft states. In this line, it will establish a certification system that allows the supervision and control of obligations and will establish flexibility mechanisms “that favor maximum efficiency”.

From the aviation sector they explain to this newspaper that the measures contemplated by the Law “are very ambiguous” so that not being defined they do not know what they will have to face. At this point, they point out that companies have already started the path towards sustainability and that the Executive has not sat down to negotiate with them.

Thus, the airlines assure that the technology is still very green, so, in addition to betting on the electric plane or biofuels, the airlines have launched projects to offset the emissions of their activity. IAG will invest in the development of a new technology that captures carbon from the atmosphere and easyJet will allocate 32.4 million euros in tree silver and renewable energy programs to neutralize all its emissions in 2020. Ryanair, considered the most polluting airline in Europe, launched in 2018 a voluntary compensation scheme to invest in environmental projects.

Measures to reduce CO2

Flying in a straight line: the aeolines defend the single European sky so that aircraft can fly in a straight line. This measure would reduce CO2 emissions from the sector by 10 million tons per year.

Reforestation: easyJet, Ryanair or IAG have reforestation programs to offset emissions.

Efficient fleets: investment in aircraft that consume less is one of the pillars of the groups.

Source: The Economist