Australian airlines could be found to have misled consumers in the way they present their net zero goals and market offset options during flight bookings, climate advocates have claimed, after a landmark legal decision on aviation “greenwashing”.
The warning from Climate Integrity, a new Australia-based advocacy group, follows a Dutch court late last month ruling that airline KLM misled customers with vague environmental claims, and that its affirmation to the goals of the Paris Agreement was “misleading and therefore unlawful”.
The Dutch greenwashing decision found 15 of 19 of KLM’s claims about its environmental ambitions were misleading, including that marketing statements about offsetting flights and sustainable aviation fuels (SAF) painted “too rosy a picture” of the technologies’ feasibility.
A billboard ad showing a child on a swing with the statement “join us in creating a more sustainable future” was also declared misleading because it failed to explain how it related to any environmental benefit. The impression was reinforced by the background of sky, mountain and water, the court said.
Claire Snyder, the director of Climate Integrity, said “Australian airlines should be paying close attention” to that decision.
“The ruling is a timely wake-up call to airlines with public net zero commitments, that they must put forward concrete and credible decarbonisation plans or face the legal risk of misleading consumers and investors,” Snyder said.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has recently declared a crack down on “greenwashing”, and Snyder pointed to an analysis her group conducted that found Qantas’s decarbonisation plans featured “a number of low integrity practices”.
While Snyder commended Qantas as being an early mover to pledge support for the Paris Agreement goals, her group’s analysis has concluded the airline “has no comprehensive, full-costed or independently verified plan for reducing their emissions in line with a scientific pathway”.
Snyder was critical of Qantas’ interim emissions target of 25% by 2030, calling it “impossible to assess if they are on track”, and alleged Qantas had “no clear plan or timeline to phase out the use of fossil fuels”.
Heavy reliance on the ongoing use of offsets was also of concern, Snyder said, as the schemes have varying levels of integrity. She noted UN expert groups have urged companies to have plans to actively reduce emissions, and not just rely on future technologies.
Many industries are pushing ahead with decarbonisation plans but aviation has proved more difficult, in large part due to a lack of readily available technology such as electric replacements for modern commercial passenger aircraft.
Qantas and Virgin Australia, like most global airlines, have announced emissions reductions agendas that heavily rely on offsets, including buying credits from projects in Australia and overseas. They also give customers the option to pay for an individual offset when booking their flight.
Snyder compared Qantas’ “fly carbon neutral” option to the marketing strategies used by KLM in its scheme that was found misleading.
“As a consumer flying with Qantas you could be forgiven for thinking that a few dollars for an offset at checkout means your flight makes no contribution to the climate crisis,” Snyder said.
Virgin Australia makes a similar claim when offering passengers an offset option during booking.
Both Qantas and Virgin Australia also have future plans to incorporate SAF when it becomes available.
While airlines struggle with the prohibitive price of SAF – on average 2.5 times more than existing jet fuel – and scarce availability globally, Australia’s aviation industry experiences these barriers more acutely because it is not produced at commercial quantities locally.
Qantas’ target is for 10% of fuel use to come from SAF by 2030 and it has invested in local production startups. Virgin, acknowledging local supply issues, has said it wants to be able to buy greener fuel to power other airlines’ planes overseas but be recognised as if it had used the fuel on its domestic flights.
Critics argue that a carrier cannot fairly claim it has plans to reduce its emissions if it intends to grow its network and operate more flights, producing more emissions, in the long term.
Zoe Bush, a climate lawyer with the Environmental Defenders Office, said Australian airlines “know that consumer decisions are informed by climate considerations, and so they’re trying to inform consumers that they’re taking action”.
“But they’re ultimately relying on the same technologies as KLM,” she said.
Bush said it was “easy to mislead consumers” under Australian law, and so Australian aviation companies would be well advised to make sure their representations on offsets and SAF could be substantiated”.
A Qantas spokesperson said “aviation is a hard-to-abate sector and high integrity offsets are key to us meeting emission reduction targets until sustainable aviation fuel and low and zero-emissions technologies are more readily available”.
Virgin Australia declined to comment. Both Virgin and Qantas’s offset programs are certified under the government’s Climate Active program. The program’s effectiveness was called into question by a 2023 Guardian investigation.
