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Changemakers: Mobility

5 people tackling aviation and shipping emissions

POLITICO’s guide to the individuals influencing efforts to cut the carbon footprint of planes and ships.

This article is part of POLITICO’s Changemakers series, looking at the players driving European policy.

Shipping and aviation account for more than 5 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. That’s the price we pay for cheap holiday flights, next-day deliveries online, steaks from Argentina and steel from China.

But it’s a price that many regard as unsustainable thanks to growing worry about climate change.

Neither shipping nor aviation were included in the Paris climate agreement, and the U.N. bodies responsible for both sectors are still discussing how to cut emissions. That’s a slow process, and the EU plans to move much faster. European Commission President-elect Ursula von der Leyen is promising her European Green Deal will be a policy “hallmark” that will include shipping and aviation.

Here are five key figures to watch in the battle to cut emissions.

Menno Snel, Dutch finance minister

Snel is leading the European charge to make aviation pay for its emissions. His country wants to introduce a ticket tax and Snel has been pushing hard to make it an EU-wide effort. He wants the new Commission to take a hard look at the proposal “as soon as it takes office,” said a Dutch spokesman in Brussels.

The Dutch delegations brought up the subject each time the EU’s finance ministers, transport ministers and environment ministers met this year. “It’s not sustainable that we fly for a weekend with some friends all around Europe when we could do it with the train,” Snel told POLITICO.

So far he hasn’t closed the deal. The latest Transport Council showed a lot of countries on Europe’s periphery — Latvia, Malta, Hungary and Cyprus to name a few — are unconvinced about taxing aviation. He also faces opposition within his own coalition government.

Making the effort even more difficult, EU tax legislation can only be adopted by unanimity. But Snel is undaunted. “We will go for unanimity,” he said. “It’s way too soon to think Plan B. I’d rather think about Plan A.”

Karima Delli, MEP, Greens, France

A strong showing by the Greens in the European election put Delli back in charge of the European Parliament’s Transport and Tourism Committee — and with even more firepower.

Delli is among a group of empowered MEPs scrutinizing every bit of the EU’s climate policies, whether it means writing letters to the government of California on forest standards or criticizing Brussels’ negotiating strategy on a global emissions pact at the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO). She has called for the Commission to propose a “sustainable aviation strategy,” has pushed airspace reform and is a big proponent of ending jet fuel’s tax exemption.

With much of the transport committee’s time expected to be spent chiseling the new Commission’s climate proposals, Delli will expand her role as agitator-in-chief and will almost certainly egg on the Berlaymont to show more ambition: More money for research initiatives like Clean Sky, an expanded Emissions Trading System, more taxes, more rail — more of everything.

Henrik Hololei, director general of DG Move

The well-connected Estonian has been working on transport for years and is now on the frontline in the fight over how far to go in taxing aviation. He was head of cabinet to Commission Vice President for Transport Siim Kallas up to 2010 and was then a deputy secretary-general of the European Commission between 2010 and 2013, a role that gave him a birds-eye view of the institution.

He’s now at the center of a storm over whether to hit airlines and their passengers with more charges, as the chief of the department responsible for drafting any new legislation. That makes him a key player in deciding how far to go and it seems so far that he’s onboard with the industry on this one. “Tax is punishment,” Hololei said in May, adding that any new air tax “will not lower emissions in the long run.” That’s important because it puts him on the side of the airlines which argue that added costs will hit poor people and remote regions the hardest. That’s something he’ll know about as a former minister from one of the EU’s most far-flung member countries.

Michael O’Leary, Ryanair CEO

There’s something strange about the list of the EU’s top-10 carbon emitters. Jostling for space among the Continent’s coal-fired power plants is its largest airline: Ryanair. That’s a potential image problem for the discount carrier and its abrasive CEO Michael O’Leary.

Earlier this year the airline began reporting its monthly carbon emissions. It’s also set up a scheme allowing passengers to pay a small sum to offset the carbon footprint of their flight. So far, Ryanair is having more trouble with its pilots unions than with passengers abandoning cheap flights because of carbon guilt.

The bigger danger is what rising aviation emissions mean for O’Leary’s business model over the long term. Politicians are increasingly keen to slap taxes on either tickets or jet fuel to get people to fly less. Some countries like Germany are looking at fees that are squarely aimed at discount airlines while cleverly avoiding inflicting harm on national champion Lufthansa.

The Ryanair boss insists he’s already paying his fair share. “Nobody runs articles saying let’s tax the ferries and the boats. It is always, ‘Tax the planes,’” O’Leary told a press briefing this summer. But von der Leyen aims to slash the bloc’s carbon emissions by reducing the free permits that airlines get under the EU’s Emissions Trading System and revamping the energy tax directive. All bad news for O’Leary.

Søren Skou, CEO of Maersk

Skou has made the world’s largest shipping company a trendsetter. In an industry not known for rapid technological innovation, Skou wants to ensure Maersk becomes carbon-neutral by 2050. Last year, countries agreed to cut their shipping emissions by half by 2040, but Skou wants to go beyond that target. “To take the next big step change towards decarbonization of shipping, a shift in propulsion technologies or a shift to clean fuels is required which implies close collaboration from all parties,” Skou said this month.

He’s been tweaking his company’s strategy for years, selling off Maersk’s oil and gas business to focus on container shipping. In contrast to aviation, which is having trouble finding greener alternatives to kerosene, maritime shipping is converting to low sulfur fuels and to natural gas. Skou joined the Getting to Zero coalition — a group of companies from finance, energy and infrastructure — at the U.N. climate summit last month. Maersk’s efforts are pressuring ports to provide adequate fueling facilities, oil companies to provide new fuels, and European policymakers to set Maersk’s efforts as the industry norm.