While the European Union tirelessly puts pressure on car manufacturers, its very laws oblige Lufthansa and several other airlines to complete flights with empty planes so as not to lose slots.
We talk a lot and very often about the strategy that the European Union it is embracing in its endeavor to promote the electric car, as well as the enormous pressure that this has placed on vehicle manufacturers.
They have been forced to forcefully modify their short and medium-term plans to comply with the anti-emission regulations and the objectives set by said body, which has put many in a delicate situation.
An Airbus A380 needs to use the energy equivalent to the fuel of 3,500 cars
Large investments, renovated factories, new models and / or complete ranges (EV from KIA, EQ from Mercedes, ID from Volkswagen, Ioniq from Hyundai), even exclusive brands such as Polestar (from Volvo) … all framed in a hostile weather In which the message is gradually permeating that combustion engine cars (which today are really profitable) and their manufacturers are the enemy.
Something that, ultimately, hurts not only companies in the automotive sector, but users who must bear the consequences of a accelerated and hasty transition for which the world is not really prepared.
What pollute cars
But is there really such a rush to complete the transition to the electric vehicle and is the private car the number 1 enemy of the environment? This is debatable based on the data that the European Union itself makes public.
According to EU figures, 30% of carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions produced annually in its territory correspond to transport, of which 60.7% are the responsibility of automobiles, 26.2% of heavy vehicles, 13.6% of maritime transport and 13.4% of civil aviation.
Undoubtedly, light private transport constitutes the main problem in this regard, although not because of the amount of emissions that a vehicle emits, but because of the enormous amount of them that circulate on the planet.
Airplanes are leaving
And it is that, if we take into account the figures that a typical plane throws Airbus A380 With a fuel capacity of 323,546 liters, it needs to use the energy equivalent to the fuel that is used for approximately 3,500 cars, so it is clear that an airplane is more polluting than a car. Of course, it is capable of transporting many more people.
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With these data, it could be thought that the European Union should also focus on aviation (as well as in shipping) if you really want to tackle the problem of pollution from shipping.
But not. In fact, it even encourages thousands of planes to fly empty with a single purpose: to comply with the regulations imposed by the European Union. It is what is known as ghost flights and airlines are forced to perform them in order to not to lose the so-called “slots”, that is to say, the flight rights on certain routes.
Due to the increase in COVID cases due to the high transmissibility of the Omicron variant, Lufthansa will be forced to cancel 33,000 flights scheduled between January and March, being 18,000 of them unnecessary or phantom flights.
Before the outbreak of the coronavirus, the European Union forced airlines to cover 80% of the flights on each route, figure that lowered up to 50% through a moratorium that will expire in March 2022. After that, the percentage will increase until it is set at 64%.
Lufthansa CEO Carsten Spohr warned a few days ago that there is no point in operating unnecessary flights just to avoid losing your flight rights. “In almost all parts of the world, exemptions have been established so as not to harm the climate, but the EU does not allow it”, he assured in an interview in the Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper. “It is something very harmful to the climate and contradicts what the European Commission wants to achieve with its Fit for 55 package,” he reiterated.
Taxes, but few
Recently, Transport & Environment published a report stating that European airlines only pay taxes worth 30% of their CO₂ emissions, since 70% of the remaining flights take place outside the community space. The conclusion is that airlines currently pollute freely in their operations outside the community space and also account for the bulk of the activity of the main airlines.
Specifically, the report states that operations outside the EU account for 77% for Lufthansa; 83% for Air Europa and 86% for British Airways. On these flights, European airlines issued in 2019 a total of 65.9 million tons of CO₂, for which they did not have to pay taxes.
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In addition, the five largest airports in Europe, London Heathrow, Paris Charles de Gaulle, Frankfurt, Amsterdam Schiphol and Madrid Barajas, They pollute more than the entire Swedish economy, according to the online airport tracker created by ODI, Transport and Environment (T&E) and the International Council for Clean Transport (ICCT). Specifically, these five airports emit 53 million tonnes of CO₂ (excluding cargo flights), which are exempt from fuel tax.
Jo Dardenne, aviation manager at Transport & Environment, noted that ‘unlike cars or power plants, most emissions from flights are released outside the borders of Europe, outrageously overlooking the vast majority of emissions from European airports. All flights should be included in the emissions trading system, not just in Europe. ‘
There is the paradox that all the aforementioned airports have expansion plans, especially Heathrow, whose planned expansion has recently been delayed due to COVID. This complex is responsible for the second largest airport emissions in the world, since its 16.2 million tons of CO₂ every year equal to 8.1 million cars.
Meanwhile, manufacturers are forced to take the combustion car to the slaughterhouse.