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APRIL 2020 businesstraveller.comSUSTAINABILITY
imply that paying double the offset for your flight would
make it “carbon negative” so we could all fly more and
more, and simply plant more and more trees.SO WHAT SHOULD I DO?
You could cut down on your travel, if you are able.
You could use video-conferencing or the phone for
non-essential meetings, but assuming you do all of
that and yet still fly a lot, then carbon offsetting is a
way of doing something. If you decide to offset, you
have a choice of calculators to work out how much to
offset (see opposite). Some offer the choice of choosing
what proportion of your emissions will go into an
offsetting project, and what proportion will be used
to buy sustainable aviation fuel (SAF). Obviously, the
SAF won’t be used for your flight, but by deciding, for
instance, that 80 per cent of your journey will be offset
in SAF, you are effectively offsetting your flight in the
present rather than the future.
Please note, however, that while choosing to “buy”
SAF is probably the most immediately sustainable way of
offsetting a flight, it is much more expensive – SAF costs
two or three times more than traditional aviation fuel.TELL ME ABOUT SAF/BIOFUEL...
They are non-petroleum-based fuels that are blended
with conventional fuels up to an industry-standard limit
(currently 50 per cent, although in practice significantly
less). The fuel must be resourced in a manner that
avoids depletion of natural resources and mitigates
its contribution to climate change. It must also meet
current certification requirements for use in turbine-
powered aircraft engines.
SAF can be derived from various sources, such as
cooking oil, plant oils, municipal waste, industrial off-gas,
sugars and agricultural residues, and be processed in
alternative ways, including thermochemical and catalytic
production processes. You can read more about it on
businesstraveller.com – search “Fuelling change”. One
problem (and there are several) is that there won’t be
enough non-food farmland to meet the demand for both
the fuel we’ll need and all of the trees we need to plant.SHOULDN’T AIRLINES BE THE ONES TO OFFSET?
Some of them are doing so – British Airways, Air France,
Jetblue and Delta are all offsetting a proportion of their
flights (normally short-haul). However, many view this
as not coming close to the true cost of the flights.in economy in terms of weight and space, so this is
factored into the calculation.
International trade body IATA says that about 1 per
cent of flyers offset their journeys, although in our
own survey conducted on businesstraveller.com, some
18 per cent said they were planning to offset them.
The money you pay then (eventually) goes to projects,
such as planting forests, restoring peatlands, subsidising
efficient stoves in Africa and helping poor communities
in developing countries. It would seem, therefore, on the
face of it, to be a good thing to do. But is it?THE CASE AGAINST
There are many arguments against carbon offsetting
(and not all of them are made by climate change
deniers). Here is a selection:- It is better to not travel at all. This is true if viewed
narrowly on the question of carbon emissions, and
the recent phenomenon of “flight shaming” has seen
demand in a few countries slow slightly.
Nevertheless, every estimate indicates
that aviation is continuing to grow and so
will make up a larger share of emissions as
time goes on. IATA forecasts a doubling
of passengers by 2036 to 8.2 billion, so
no matter how much more efficient the
aircraft become, that will still mean a
huge increase in emissions. There’s also
the small matter of business travellers
who are expected to fly as part of their
job function. - Offsetting is a dangerous distraction; the realissueis
we need to cut emissions very quickly. - Offsetting also shifts responsibility for
carbon emissions from rich individuals,
corporations and countries on to the poor. - Many carbon offsetting projects, such as
planting trees, will take years, if not decades,
to have any effect on emissions, since trees
don’t reach their average carbon storage
capacity until 15 to 25 years after planting. - The EU is not convinced that carbon offsetting
works, and from 2021 will stop allowing offsets to count
towards emissions reductions targets. This follows a
report which found that 85 per cent of offset projects
under the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development
Mechanism (CDM) had failed to reduce emissions. - If offsetting was effective, then the same logic would
‘Buying’ biofuel
is probably the
most immediately
sustainable way to
offset, but is much
more expensive