Green aviation policies should be abandoned if the costs outweigh the benefits, the head of the world’s most influential airline body has said.
Willie Walsh, chief executive of the International Air Transport Association (Iata) and former boss of British Airways, said reaching net zero by 2050 was “existential, not optional”.
However, he also suggested that governments should have the courage to stop green policies and change the approach 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 the global aviation sector will make a net profit of more than $30bn (£24bn) this year, up $3bn. on last year’s figure.
Part of Walsh’s speech focused on current approaches to decarbonising the aviation sector and tackling the climate crisis, in which he hit out against green levies in the sector.
He said higher taxes were not the answer to getting to net zero and that the current “parade of fragmented green tax proposals” was banning people from flying sustainably and grounding all but the rich.
Walsh put forward eight approaches which he claimed would improve the world’s progress towards greener aviation, which included a call for provisions to allow certain green policies to be reviewed and withdrawn if they do not work.
“The measures must include provisions for review and abandonment if they do not produce the intended results,” he said. “Some good ideas will surely 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 needed a global solution and IATA would push for globally recognized and accepted rules to reduce carbon emissions, while calling for measures to channel more investment from fossil fuels into sustainable aviation fuels (SAF).
A number of countries are implementing SAF mandates, which require providers to use a certain percentage of fuel in their aircraft.
SAF can be obtained from food waste, oil and grease, green and municipal waste and non-food crops and it is claimed that they could reduce emissions by 80% compared to traditional fuels. But critics say hopes for the technology are overblown, with a report from the Institute for Policy Studies think tank arguing that efforts to bring SAF to scale are too far from averting the climate crisis.
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The UK is set to approve its own SAF mandate next January, 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. The SAF is now responsible only more than 0.5% of global fuel consumption.
Walsh said these mandates faced a number of problems, with governments sometimes ordering airlines to buy SAF in quantities that did not exist. He said this often resulted in manufacturers being fined and passed on to the airlines.
“We have seen this in France, where fuel suppliers are happy to accept penalties for not fulfilling the SAF mandate. They simply exercise their monopoly power and pass on those costs [to] Airlines. This has to be stopped,” he said.
Iata revealed that airlines are likely to make $30.5 billion in profits in 2024, up from the $27.4 billion forecast for 2023. This was also up from the $25.7 billion forecast for 2024 from December of this year.
It also predicted record revenues for the sector of $1 trillion, but that would be partially offset by record spending of $946 billion.