Why airports should take a leadership role in the carbon offsetting of flights

Whilst aviation only accounted for 2–5% of total human-made emissions (pre-Covid), both its volume and share are increasing significantly, with estimates that aviation will contribute up to 22% of global CO2 emissions by 2050. Although new aircraft technologies are in development, these options are unlikely to be ready for commercial use on a large scale until after 2050.

Emissions from aviation are not generated evenly across the planet. Only around 10% of the world’s population flies in a given year, and one long haul return flight can have a significant impact on personal carbon footprints.

Travellers are becoming increasingly concerned by the carbon footprint of their flights. Research has shown that nearly half of passengers would voluntarily pay to offset their flights to balance this out. Unfortunately, up to 70% of travellers fly on airlines that don’t have carbon offsetting programmes and there is a lack of transparency over where their contributions are going, which limits the number of travellers who offset.

Airports around the world are developing significant sustainability strategies to tackle their scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions. This is important work but leaves the carbon emitted by flights, which equates to more than 95% of aviation emissions, largely unaccounted for.

As the connecting point between millions of passengers and multiple airlines, airports are perfectly placed to take an environmental leadership position with a voluntary traveller carbon offsetting programme. An offsetting programme for flights sits outside of an airport’s sustainability strategy. It’s a service offering to travellers who wish to offset voluntarily, supports on-airport sustainability and allows airports to take a wider environmental leadership role. CarbonClick’s Climate Friendly Traveller program can help.

Here’s how our Climate Friendly Traveller programme works:

• Our customisable white label solution is easily implemented in your airport
• Travellers connect to the offsetting platform by scanning QR codes in the terminal or after connecting to the WiFi
• They can quickly and accurately calculate the footprint of their journey
• Travellers pay for high quality, verified Gold Standard offsets, and our track and trace functionality gives them immediate transparency
• Every carbon offset is aggregated into an airport’s cumulative impact dashboard, which can be shared in the terminal, on websites and/or in sustainability marketing.

CarbonClick was born out of the aviation industry and understands just how complex, expensive and inefficient it is for businesses to create their own carbon offsetting programmes. We exist to make carbon offsetting simple, trustworthy and affordable.

CarbonClick are now partnering with first-mover airports around the world, helping them to take the lead on balancing out the carbon footprint of global air travel. We know that carbon offsetting isn’t the only solution, but it is a meaningful way of taking immediate climate action while the aviation industry works on longer-term reduction strategies.

Get in touch with us!

Michelle Noordermeer: michelle@carbonclick.com