The aviation industry is great at passing the climate blame

More and more flights are coming with additional environmental charges, as airlines pass on the costs of their climate damage to flyers. But so far, offsets like this have done little to reduce emissions. What we need is a solid plan to ensure that airlines and their users pay a fair price for their environmental damage.

There’s been lots of talk about compulsory “environmental cost surcharges” on flights lately, with Lufthansa recently introducing charges from EU countries, the UK, Norway and Switzerland from the start of 2025. As the CEO of an environmental NGO working to decarbonise aviation, you might be surprised that I want to reassure the majority of people who choose not to pay extra to voluntarily offset their carbon emissions from flights that they are not doing the wrong thing. But in reality, those “offsets” do little to reduce emissions – and the United Nations Environment Programme warned they could even lead to an increase in emissions.

The rising cost of flights

However, non-voluntary environmental charges on airline tickets (like the ones that Lufthansa recently announced) will be the norm going forward. Unfortunately, if the environmental damage of aviation is to stop, the era of £50 return flights for a weekend away will have to come to an end.

While environmental regulations might be “to blame” for extra charges as Lufthansa puts it, it is simply a case of airlines reallocating that cost to the relatively small number of regular flyers rather than the cost being imposed on the general public. Extreme weather events like flooding or heat waves are getting more and more frequent and causing more and more damage both in terms of human health, but also in terms of reinforcing things like flood defences and creating accessible cool spaces for everyone to access in a heat wave. Then there is the clean-up costs after an extreme event does occur, causing destruction (Hurricane Beryl is an example right now).

In an ideal world, airlines would pay the full price of their environmental damage, but that full cost, as well as the cost of truly sustainable fuel (to prevent any future damage) means that it is unlikely to ever be the case. Truly sustainable fuels will be more expensive than oil and preventing damage from increased extreme weather, not to mention paying for the damage already done, comes with a large cost. Currently, 70% of flights are taken by just 15% of the population in the UK. I, for one, would welcome ensuring that the small part of the public that fly should be the ones paying for that pollution.

Aviation is responsible for somewhere between 5–8% of all climate impacts worldwide every year. This figure does not just include CO2 emissions but other harmful ‘non-CO2 emissions’ which are soot, nitrogen oxides and water vapour that cause the contrails we all see in the sky. But this uncertainty is generated because the industry is fighting regulation that would do nothing more than require it to report on what those non-CO2 impacts are.

Aviation’s non-solutions

Aviation companies pay no fuel tax, no VAT and currently only pay for emissions on intra-EU and UK routes. If you fly from Frankfurt to New York on one of those Lufthansa planes right now, the climate impact is not paid for. As a company that recorded an operating profit of  €2.7 billion in 2023, it would hardly be unfair to expect them to shoulder this cost.  

The big ‘BUT’ here is where that money is going.

If it is used to invest in so-called “sustainable aviation fuels” then the public is right to remain sceptical of extra environmental surcharges. The author of an FT piece on Lufthansa’s announced surcharge pointed out that “Air France-KLM laid the groundwork in 2022 by imposing a “SAF contribution charge”. Meanwhile, in March 2024 a Dutch court found KLM to be guilty of greenwashing, stating that the expression “sustainable” in Sustainable Aviation Fuel is too absolute and therefore misleading. These fuels are often made from used cooking oil, or other “waste” products that often are not really waste and can have huge secondary negative impacts on biodiversity.

Rather than funding non-solutions like these that only inflame the climate crisis further, revenues should be divided between financing green hydrogen-based fuels, the only truly viable route to decarbonise aviation, and supporting climate vulnerable countries adaption to the adverse effects of the climate crisis. With historically high emissions and low taxes, aviation must start paying its fair share for the damage it has contributed to, especially in the Global South.  

Perhaps after all the free polluting it’s time that airlines become more honest about their sustainable ‘solutions’ and they, and their users, paid a fairer price for their environmental damage?