A year before the pandemic, the European Commission published the list of the most polluting companies on the continent. Apart from coal-fired power plants, a classic on these blacklists, an airline, Ryanair , appeared for the first time among the top ten emitters of greenhouse gases . Yesterday, one day after returning from the Glasgow climate summit , Juanma Moreno received Ryanair’s CEO Eddie Wilson in San Telmo after running for the “green revolution” battering ram, a slogan that has lost steam in the distance between the Scottish and Andalusian air space.
The photo that links to the Junta de Andaluciaand the low cost airline is evidence of a contradiction. And there is no need to recall the famous words of Ryanair’s CEO, Michael O’Leary, when he dismissed in 2017 that the concern about climate change was “babble”. You just have to expose the data published in 2019 by the European Commission and the NGO Transport and Environment (T&E) just before the tourist paralysis caused by the pandemic. Raynair had increased CO2 emissions by 6.9% in one year and 49% in five years. Except for aviation, all sectors were then reducing pollution indicators.
“Ryanair is the new coal,” said the head of aviation at the T&E association. That is why Moreno stained his hands with soot yesterday almost at the same time that the government spokesman, Elias Bendodo , recalled that the engines of the Andalusian economy are agriculture and tourism, two industries with a high degree of pollution.
The airlines try to mitigate the effects that their activity causes on the planet since the Paris Agreement , a text that replaces what is prescribed in the Kyoto Agreementand that it has been applicable since 2020. But the engine of the tourism industry cannot be frustrated like this because it can. One of the efforts focuses on the use of less polluting fuels than kerosene. The recent Airbus A320neo flight between Madrid and Bilbao ran on 1.84% biofuel. The rest, naturally, was the aggressive kerosene of a lifetime.
The European Commission wants aviation to cover 2% of its consumption with sustainable fuels by 2025, to increase to 5% by 2030. “The ecological transition is complicated,” Javier Gandara, president of the Airline Association, recently recalled.
The problem is in the price of this kind of biofuels: “They cost three or four times more than kerosene,” said Gandara in a piece on aerial activity published in Cinco Dias.
The airline sector fears like a green stick a future rise in the price of travel and ask for incentives. Apparently, the subsidies that public administrations dedicate to aerial activity are not enough. From the outset, the Board will not think of applying taxes to commercial aviation. Catalonia already does. So do Germany or France, places where the ” green revolution ” is less contradictory than in Andalusia.
