swiss & lufthansa go offsetting with myclimate

just recently i received an email from my most favorite way of emitting co2: swiss international airways.

it reads as follows:

Dear Mr. Pedretti,

SWISS has long been committed to reducing the per-passenger level of CO2 emissions its aircraft generate, and has invested and implemented measures accordingly. We now offer our passengers the opportunity to make a voluntary contribution to compensating CO2 output as a means of supporting our efforts to protect the environment. To do so, we have teamed up with “myclimate”, the renowned Swiss foundation.

- For every booking, you can have your flight’s CO2 emission calculated and compensate for it voluntarily.

- With your contribution you support projects selected by SWISS. These are conducted in accordance with internationally recognised criteria and have been awarded the Gold Standard, currently the highest ranking for CO2-compensation projects.

With every booking on SWISS.COM you have the opportunity to compensate your flight’s CO2 emissions.

Yours sincerely,

Thomas Benz
Senior Manager
Head of Marketing Switzerland

behind the eco-marketing hype...
well after many years of outright denial by the aviation industry that their business has any siginificant impact upon our climate and after even more futile attempts (and years) of myclimate and similar private CO2 offset businesses to get a foothold within the airline industry to offer this kind of "voluntary service", it seems that everything now is coming to a positive end.


finally, the aviation industry's C02 emissions are coming under attack. it is highly likely that the industry will become included under the european emission trading system (eu-ets). mandatory emissions cut are not anymore very far away. so much to the context of swiss's press announcement...

first there such be no doubt, that offsetting is NOT a solution to global warming even though wwf's cdm gold standard assures that high quality additional renewable power projects are coming online (which then are called offsets). so myclimate does deserve credit for its pioneering role in the aid industry.
and you could even make a point that it makes some sense to concentrate most of the offsetting efforts on air travel since this means of transportation really only works with high-density fuels. it cannot be powered with other, "cleaner" fuels. for more on this reasoning, see wwf masterplan (750 KB, page 15)

secondly, the problematic should be reframed: the european airline industry is currently rolling out a very professional and well-funded public relations and lobbying campaign to hinder regulation of its co2 emission as well as other sensible measures such as a tax on kerosene...
now they speak of self-regulation... which is just another attempt to postpone regulation and, even worse, to hide the true environmental and economic costs of the unchecked air travel boom.

the fundamental issue is all about smarter mobility, less flying, and not about voluntary offset possibilities! swiss (and lufthansa's) environmental measures such better technology, improved resource efficiency of operations and infrastrucutre are not enough. the real facts are that increasingly cheaper and cheaper air travel for persons and goods and thus rapidly increasing overall air traffic is offsetting by large all relative gains made through more efficient turbines, better airways management etc.

a simple but effective trick of the industry with young fleets (such as swiss) is to highlight the low fuel consumption per 100 flown person kilometers . swiss currently boasts an average of only 3.8 l (see image on the left, taken from here). sounds too good! the problem is just that with ever more cheap flights we add up those miles so fast that NO relative improvements will ever be able to make a dent! a simple calculation: a economy return flight to bangkok generates over more than 18'000 km more than 1.8 t CO2. and then we add some cheap short-haul trip to london and mallorca, let's say, just another 3'500 km and 0.35 t... to put this in a context: if i drive an average middle class car with 7l per 100 km consumption for 20'000 km i will have emitted about 4.7 t

so the swiss & lufthansa offsetting initiative it is just another cheap eco-marketing measure not real eco-business innovation... it is "cheap" because it does not change the rules of the game, rethink the business concept, but better segment from a customer groups and reap additional sales profits from that.

for futher reading in these matters, i strongly suggest the ten reasons of planestupid.com, a coalition of uk citizens, on bringing the planes back to earth.