Opinion: Are airlines doing enough for the environment?

National carriers are quick to tout carbon offsets, promises and pledges to achieve net-zero emissions and to establish sustainability programs, but do they work, or is this just a green-thumb PR move?

Greenwashing in aviation

Greenwashing, the practice of eco-friendly marketing without committing to meaningful action, has been taking off across the aviation sector for a few years now.

Despite air travel being expected to continue growing well into the future and becoming one of the most accessible modes of travel (which it already is), marketing strategies aren’t enough to prompt real change.

In late 2024, Qantas was referred to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) by Climate Integrity and the Environmental Defenders Office for alleged greenwashing, where they claimed that the national carrier lacked scientific evidence and credibility in its climate approach.

Pushing to please the consumer and sell a bit extra might be good for business, but for the rest of the world, these attempts are too little too late.

Consumer-driven, business-ideology-focused companies may want to do good, but their efforts are fruitless when the damage is already done, and sustainable fuel options for aviation aren’t utilised enough.

Wanting to do good isn’t enough when forecast emissions are set to rise by 3 per cent annually, threatening the global carbon rate that needs to be maintained to limit excessive global warming.

Tick here to save the planet!

When booking a flight in Australia, passengers are given the option to ‘Fly Carbon Neutral’ by paying an extra $20 or so to “offset emissions” from the flight. Essentially, they are voluntary payments that supposedly compensate for emissions generated by a flight, with the funding going to environmental projects.

This is the most common strategy that airlines employ to get the green tick of approval; however, the legitimacy of carbon offsets is a largely contested mode of climate response and has been deemed a futile effort by qualified scientists and climate experts.

“Using carbon credits cannot turn an unsustainable flight into a sustainable one, and consumers still need to be mindful of their travel choices,” said Derik Broekhoff, a senior scientist at the Stockholm Environment Institute.

“It is not accurate for airlines to claim that purchasing carbon credits will compensate for fossil fuel emissions if those emissions are outside Paris-aligned decarbonisation trajectories.”

Whilst these attempts to make peace with the environmental impact of flying make travellers and businesses feel good about themselves, they don’t equate to real change. The environmental efforts that offset funding would contribute to would likely go ahead anyway; there is no change in business/flying practices, and the emissions are still being pumped into our shared global atmosphere.

Ticking a box and paying twenty bucks one time does not mean clean air, clean skies, and a clean Earth.

“While contributing to conservation is a great thing, it cannot compensate or neutralise the emissions from flying,” said director of climate integrity, Claire Snyder.

“The problem is that greenwashing and over-exaggerating your climate credentials creates this false sense of progress … it undermines the kind of urgency for action.”

SAF

But don’t worry, it’s not all doom and gloom! Sustainable aviation fuel might help limit CO2 and other harmful emissions from aviation.

Not bringing anything new to Earth and made from entirely renewable materials, SAF is increasingly being adopted by major companies, marking a potential wind of legitimate, actionable change in the aviation industry.

“That’s why SAF is so important, because it’s technology that’s available to us now,” said Heidi Hauf, former chair of Greenskies at Aviation/Aerospace Australia.

“It can be dropped into existing infrastructure, we don’t have to build new pipelines or storage systems – and over 70% of the globe’s emissions from aviation come from long-haul flights.”

In February, Qantas and Airbus together announced a major investment in a low-carbon and sustainable aviation fuel project in Victoria, with Qantas’ chief sustainability officer, Fiona Messent, saying: “Building sustainable aviation fuel supply in Australia is essential to meeting our decarbonisation targets and reducing aviation’s emissions.”

This most recent investment seeks to use plantation forestry residue to produce over 300,000 tonnes of low-carbon methanol, which can be converted into sustainable aviation fuel.

Developments towards Australia’s first methanol-to-fuel facility will also aim to produce over 130 million litres of SAF annually.

The average consumer can only hope that these measures will see big business taking actionable, legitimate steps to push back the encroaching, irreversible tipping point of climate change.