Green aviation policies should be abandoned if the costs outweigh the benefits, the head of the world’s most influential aviation body has said.
Willie Walsh, director general of the International Air Transport Association (Iata) and former boss of British Airways, said achieving net zero emissions by 2050 was “existential and not optional”.
However, he also suggested that governments must have the courage to halt green policies and change course if they are not delivering the intended results.
The comments came as part of Walsh’s keynote speech at Iata’s annual general meeting in Dubai on Monday, in which the body revealed that the global aviation sector would post a net profit of more than $30 billion (£24 billion) this year, an increase of $3 billion. on last year’s figure.
Part of Walsh’s speech focused on the current approach to decarbonising the aviation sector and tackling the climate crisis, in which he spoke out against green levies on the sector.
He said more taxes are not the answer to reaching net zero and that the current “parade of fragmented green tax proposals” is banning people from flying sustainably and grounding everyone but the wealthy.
Walsh put forward eight approaches that he said would improve the world’s progress towards greener aviation, including a call to introduce provisions that would allow certain green policies to be reviewed and scrapped if they were not working.
“Measures should include provisions for review and termination if they do not achieve the intended results,” he said. “Some good ideas will certainly translate into good policy. And many may not.
“When a policy has clearly failed — especially when the costs outweigh the benefits — regulators must have the courage to stop and quickly change course.”
Walsh said the global industry needs global solutions and that Iata would push for globally recognized and accepted rules to reduce carbon emissions, while also calling for action to direct more fossil fuel investment into sustainable aviation fuels (SAFs). .
A number of countries are implementing SAF mandates, which impose requirements on providers to use a certain percentage of the fuel in their aircraft.
SAFs can come from oils and fats from food waste, green and municipal waste and non-food crops, and it is claimed they can reduce emissions by 80% compared to traditional fuels. However, critics say hopes for the technology are overstated, with a report from the Institute for Policy Studies think tank arguing that efforts to bring SAFs to scale are too far removed from preventing the climate crisis.
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Britain is set to adopt its own SAF mandate in January next year, which will introduce laws requiring 2% of all jet fuel used by airlines to come from sustainable and low-carbon sources by the end of 2025. and 10% by 2030. SAF now equates to just over 0.5% of the world’s fuel needs.
Walsh said these mandates faced a number of problems, with governments sometimes requiring airlines to purchase SAF in quantities that did not exist. He said this often led to producers being fined and passed on to airlines.
“We have witnessed this in France, where fuel suppliers are happy to accept fines for non-compliance with the SAF mandate. They simply exercise their monopoly power and pass on those costs [to] airlines. This must be stopped,” he said.
Iata revealed that airlines were likely to make a profit of $30.5 billion in 2024, compared to the $27.4 billion expected for 2023. This was also more than the $25.7 billion forecast for 2024 in December this year.
It also forecasts record revenues of $1 trillion for the sector, but this would be partially offset by record spending of $946 billion.