Europe’s largest airline, Ryanair, has quietly dropped a carbon offsetting service for passengers, where for €2 they could partially compensate for the emissions generated by their journey, with the funds going to designated green projects.
Ryanair has also dropped its carbon calculator, a digital tool introduced in 2021 that gave consumers the option of fully offsetting the emissions from their flight.
This calculated the emissions per passenger on every Ryanair route and allowed customers to pay the full carbon cost of their flight and contribute to environmental initiatives.
Last week, the “Customer Carbon Offsetting” section of the airline’s website, with a detailed explainer and outline of where raised money goes to, was still featuring, but following a query from The Irish Times, it is no longer visible.
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Asked whether the option had been discontinued, the airline said: “That’s correct, as there was very little interest or uptake from passengers.”
[ Are the tools for measuring greenhouse gas emissions fit for purpose?Opens in new window ]
The carbon calculator was announced with advertising messages stating, “Ryanair goes greener” and “100 per cent of customer contributions go to our climate projects”.
Some months later, its chief executive Michael O’Leary announced only 1 per cent of passengers had taken up the offer, but that subsequently climbed to 3 per cent.
The airline declined to indicate the total figure committed by passengers.
When extending the option, Ryanair said it was “committed to being a net carbon neutral airline by 2050 and the expansion of our offset scheme will further pave our way to achieving this goal while helping our environmental partners further their carbon reduction programmes”.
These contributions, with “independent certification”, supported environmental initiatives including Renature Monchique – a reforestation project in the Algarve; the distribution of energy-efficient cookstoves in Uganda by First Climate; Balikesir’s Wind Power Plant Project in Turkey, and Improved Kitchen Regimes in Malawi powered by CO2 Balance (the latter two in partnership with Shell).
By 2022, the airline said hundreds of thousands of customers had contributed more than €3.5 million to environmental projects, while it already had the lowest CO² emissions per passenger per kilometre of any major airline in Europe. It said that by switching to Ryanair, passengers could reduce their emissions.
UCC energy analyst Prof Hannah Daly, in response to the Ryanair decision, said “the climate impact of aviation can’t be swept under the carpet”.
“Giving the impression that the highly polluting impact of flying can be made sustainable with token and cheap offsetting schemes is misleading; offsetting schemes don’t compensate for the carbon emitted from flying,” she said.
Governments were increasingly scrutinising sustainability claims made by companies, “and this should be welcomed”, Prof Daly added.
The airline, which is the biggest aviation emitter in Europe, has also committed to scaling up the use of sustainable aviation fuels. But it has fallen foul of advertising authorities on its green claims and carbon offsetting. It has repeatedly referred to itself as the “greenest and cleanest airline in Europe”.
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In 2020, a claim in an advertisement that Ryanair is “Europe’s ... lowest-emissions airline” was found to be misleading by the UK’s advertising regulator. Also in 2020, Ryanair dropped two carbon-offset projects funded by passengers after claims they do little or nothing to reduce total emissions.
The airline dropped a tree-planting scheme in Ireland before a single sapling was planted, and pulled funding from a whale-watching project. Critics said the schemes were “woefully inadequate” at cancelling out the massive amount of greenhouse gas Ryanair produces each year.
After conducting an investigation into CO² compensation claims in the airline industry, the Netherlands Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM) accused Ryanair in 2023 of using misleading sustainability claims.
Statements such as “Fly greener to [X destination]” might give the wrong impression that consumers can fly “green” with Ryanair, it ruled.
Also, it rejected claims suggesting offsetting emissions would lead to sustainable flights.
Edwin van Houten, director of ACM’s consumer department, said: “Businesses must be honest and clear about the sustainability claims they make.
“Even with CO²-compensation schemes, flying remains a highly polluting way of travelling. Airlines may offer CO² compensation schemes, but they cannot give the impression that CO² compensation will make flying sustainable.”
[ Can the aviation industry really go green?Opens in new window ]
Ryanair then implemented changes to its website, including adding a clear message that CO² compensation does not make flying itself more sustainable.
Messages such as “Fly greener to […]” were changed to factual messages such as “compensate your estimated CO² emissions”.
In addition, icons such as green leaves were removed.
