Faced with the climate crisis, the debate over whether government ministers should fly business or economy class sounds like moving the seats on Air Titanic.
after all, there’s no such thing as low-carbon flying here – regardless of the level of comfort or confinement of your seat.
But turning left or right when boarding the plane can affect how high your personal emissions rise.
So the admission by two green party ministers that they stepped into business class during work trips should be investigated.
According to the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT), a passenger traveling in business class or first class emits up to four times more CO2 per flight mile than a fellow passenger in the cheap seats.
At first glance, that doesn’t seem like much of a logic, given that the plane flies, consumes fuel and spits out carbon, regardless of how many passengers are on board and where they sit.
The logic is that the more passengers that can be crammed into the economy, the more efficient the fuel economy and the greater the number of heads splitting emissions between them to get a lower carbon footprint ‘per passenger’.
On the other hand, the premium part of the plane will have fewer people and carry slightly less weight than the overcrowded economy part and since weight is the main determinant of fuel economy, the flight will save a bit on fuel and emissions.
But for any budget passenger who can’t be accommodated on a plane because space is taken up with spacious business class accommodation and cavernous first class accommodations, a different seat is needed on a different flight.
All those squeezed-out, cheap passengers will eventually make up a full plane load again, meaning more planes flying and thus more industrial emissions overall.
Business class travel has a different, less obvious, emissions-increasing effect, in that the expensive tickets actually subsidize economy class, keeping seat prices low and passenger numbers, flights and emissions high.
The Brussels-based campaign group Transport and Environment (T&E) referred to this confused relationship between budget and business seats in a roadmap report on aviation decarbonisation last March.
“While business travelers make up a small portion (about 20 percent) of total passengers, they generate a significant portion of airline revenue, up to 75 percent according to some sources,” the report said.
Any loss of that income would have to be offset by raising the price of budget seats, which would dampen demand.
Qatar Airways’ is luxury business class seats
T&E calculated that a 50 percent reduction in the number of business passengers could lead to a decrease of at least 4 percent in the number of economy passengers, “even if aircraft configurations are modified to reduce premium seats in favor of economy seats.”
That 4 percent drop would be significant, as it would be a much higher number than the corporate passenger base.
A reduction in the number of business class passengers can be achieved in a number of ways. Companies, the largest buyer of premium seats, can take the initiative themselves.
They are under pressure to take carbon reduction measures for businesses, so limiting flight time or switching to economy is a relatively easy target.
Matteo Mirolo, aerospace policy officer at T&E, said passengers may need a stronger push and business class seats, no matter how expensive they are, should be even more as there comes a time when accountants in even the largest companies question costs. Pull.
“Flying business class is four times worse for the climate than the economy,” said Mirolo.
“There are two solutions: stop flying business class and ideally replace your flight with low-carbon alternatives where possible.
“And for those flying business (class), we need to raise taxes on business class to reflect the disproportionate climate impact of those seats.”
Mr Mirolo had little sympathy for the argument that ministers like Eamon Ryan and Catherine Martin need space and privacy on flights to work and arrive refreshed for the negotiations where their flight is taking them.
“In such a climate emergency, ministers should have better things in mind than flying in luxury,” he said.
The aviation industry has committed to being carbon neutral by 2050 and whatever the credibility of that stated ambition, the EU is developing an initiative, called ReFuelEU, to boost the supply of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF).
Last week, the European Parliament banned the use of palm oil and other biofuels derived from environmentally destructive monoculture in SAF.
Instead, the emphasis is on e-kerosene, a synthetic fuel made from green hydrogen and carbon dioxide.
These synthetic fuels are technically proven to work, and some airlines are already mixing a small percentage with their regular fuels to start the transition.
However, they are expensive and will remain so until the technology is widely replicated and economies of scale at the price disappear.
Carbon neutral may be the future destination, but in the meantime airlines will quietly hope that discerning, in other words wealthy passengers, will continue to differentiate left from right.