Air travel carbon offsets are surely taking off in a big way, with an increasing number of airlines choosing to provide offset options to their customers. Critics, however, are of the opinion that the as a result of one’s travel needs to be tweaked to provide standardized results.
To this end, the UN’s has developed a that uses “the best publicly available industry data to account for various factors”. However, according to a critic the calculator fails to address “variations”:
“If you go from Heathrow to Athens, ICAO gives 217 kilograms (kg) of CO2. That hides huge variations - fly in a full (Boeing) B767 and it’s nearer to 160 kg per person, or fly in a half-empty (Airbus) A340 and it’s more like 360 kg.”
In addition, for a given travel distance, different airline calculators provide significantly different results. Concerns are also being raised over the efficacy of offsets and that they provide a false sense of satisfaction.
It might be true that air travel carbon offsetting is a relatively new concept that is grappling with standardization issues and air travel certainly needs to be minimized. But if taking a flight is unavoidable, isn’t it better to fly with rather than without offsets?
What do you think?
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
I definitely agree that standardization is required.
Carbon Planet are currently using the published guidelines from UK 2008 DEFRA emission factors with a RFI of 1.9. These data are averages for various stage lengths and include factors for seating class. We have also reviewed other published literature data and a detailed aviation paper is available on our website.
However, the critics comment is unpractical for the real world case and unfair to the passengers that fly.
“If you go from Heathrow to Athens, ICAO gives 217 kilograms (kg) of CO2. That hides huge variations - fly in a full (Boeing) B767 and it’s nearer to 160 kg per person, or fly in a half-empty (Airbus) A340 and it’s more like 360 kg.”
Using “averaged” data, means exactly that, on average that flight will produce the ICAO emissions. It does not hide the variations if correctly modeled, as it will contain all these variations. In addition, how is a passenger expected to know prior to their flight, whether the plane is 50%, 75% or 100% full? Why should the passenger “directly” pay the benefit/penalty for the variations, when they do not control the scheduling or anything related to the airline’s own operations. Passengers should have the right at the time of purchase of their ticket to know what their offset cost will be. The only realistic way to do this is using market averaged data.
It is in the full interest of the airlines to obtain above market average capacity utilization. Flying a plane 50% full continuously will quickly render that flight sector and the airline uneconomical, especially with current global fuel prices!
Using the market average will mean that flights in the total sum game, with all things treated equally, represent the two extremes given above as this is built into the “average”.
A further extension is the issue related with flying routes and the influence of the general west to east air movements and jets streams. A flight from Sydney to Perth and Perth to Sydney have different emissions because of these effects. However, why should the passengers flying from Perth to Sydney only benefit from the “lower” emissions. A plane must return to the origination, so it is only fair both directions pay equally based on the average. We can’t perpetually fly in a Eastly direction.
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