Ryanair, Europe’s greenest major airline, has today (28 July) announced the launch of its carbon calculator, a new digital tool that will enable consumers to fully offset their emissions on their Ryanair flight. This new feature will calculate the carbon emissions per passenger on every Ryanair route and will allow customers to pay the full carbon cost of their flight contributing to environmental initiatives.
With this development, Ryanair is delighted to expand its carbon offset programme which currently allows customers to contribute €2 towards carbon offset projects. These contributions support several 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).
Since Ryanair’s voluntary carbon offset scheme commenced, customers have contributed over €3.5m to environmental projects and Ryanair believes the expansion of its carbon offset programme will be greatly welcomed by its customers throughout Europe. Ryanair already has the lowest CO2 emissions per passenger/km of any major airline in Europe (66g) and by switching to Ryanair, passengers can now further reduce their CO2 emissions.
Although Ryanair’s CO2 emissions per passenger/km are already the lowest of any major EU airline, it believes that aviation must play a leading role in addressing climate change, and is placing an increased emphasis on mitigating how its business impacts the environment. By 2030, Ryanair’s goal is to power 12.5% of its flights with sustainable aviation fuels – this together with the $22bn investment in new Boeing 737 8-200 ‘Gamechanger’ aircraft will significantly reduce its CO2 and noise emissions over the next decade and help Ryanair achieve its aim of being a carbon neutral airline by 2050.
Director of Sustainability at Ryanair, Thomas Fowler said:
“Hundreds of thousands of Ryanair customers every year are already choosing to contribute and support the environment by selecting carbon contribution at their time of booking. The expansion of our Carbon Offset Scheme to enable our customers to fully offset the CO2 of their Ryanair flight will greatly enhance the capabilities of each of our environmental partners who are actively working on carbon offsetting programs.
Sustainability and environmental impact are considered in every business decision made in Ryanair and we are truly dedicated to being a net carbon neutral airline by 2050. Ryanair has the youngest fleet age of any major airline and this will further reduce now that we have taken delivery of our first Boeing 737-8200 ‘Gamechanger’ aircraft – which are more fuel efficient [burning 16% less fuel per seat]; will lower noise emissions by 40% and have 8 more seats per aircraft. Ryanair has set a goal to power 12.5% of all flights with sustainable aviation fuels by 2030, having recently announced a partnership with Trinity College Dublin to engage in best-in-class research on this. We only operate point-to-point routes, have industry leading load factors and are delighted to have already removed over 80% of non-recyclable plastics from our flights.
Ryanair is 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 programs.”
Source: Ryanair
This post was published on 28 July 2021 8:56 pm