No more cheap flights is the new reality for air travel

The unit price of carbon emissions has also soared recently, topping €100 ($111) for the first time in late February, and it doesn’t seem to be on its way back down. A report by Alex Irving, European transport analyst at Bernstein, puts the resulting cost from these changes for European airlines at about €5 billion in 2027.

A report by research groups SEO Amsterdam Economics and the Royal Netherlands Aerospace Centre, commissioned by airline industry bodies, has put the cost of reaching net zero by 2050 at a whopping €820 billion.

Demand growth is a touchy subject for airlines, as a recent battle over proposed flight caps between the Dutch government and Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport illustrates. The forecasts are strong: The International Air Transport Association suggested that passenger numbers would nearly double to just under 8 billion by 2040 from 2017 levels. Time will tell if rising ticket prices dampen that, but the question remains whether growth is even compatible with ambitions for carbon-neutrality.

The answer might be hard to swallow. Decarbonising flying is hard enough without the extra passengers. A briefing from the Royal Society, for example, outlined that even meeting existing UK aviation demand with biofuels would require about half of the country’s agricultural land.

Fewer flights is, naturally, the easiest way to slice carbon emissions, and so a demand drop would come with its own climate benefits. The aviation industry’s report calculates that, in 2050, the drop in demand from raising prices to pay for sustainable airplane fuel would reduce emissions by 12 percent, and economic measures — such as emissions-trading obligations and CO2 removal investments — would lead to a further 2 percent reduction, compared with a business-as-usual scenario.

Still, there’s something sad about waving goodbye to the low prices that made globetrotting accessible to millions of people. Especially as those who take the most flights are also most able to swallow the extra costs. In the UK, those in the top 10 percent of earners use far more energy flying than the poorest 20 percent use overall. The introduction of a frequent flyer levy, as has been suggested by climate campaign groups, might help address that inequality and create a new funding stream for decarbonising the sector — though it’d be extremely difficult to implement.

There are lots of unknowns when it comes to decarbonising aviation. Much of the technology the sector is expecting to use, such as electric or hydrogen-fueled aircraft, isn’t ready for takeoff yet. But one thing is for certain: It’s going to be a very expensive, challenging few decades.

Lara Williams is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering climate change.
Views are personal, and do not represent the stand of this publication.

Credit: Bloomberg