🚆✈️ Why planes are cheaper than trains — and what needs to be done about it
You're trying to do the right thing and take the train. But then you see the price and suddenly the right choice is no longer the easy choice. So what's up with that?
Hi readers,
After a (hot) summer break, Current Climate is back and we’ve got plenty of interesting topics to dig into this fall. First up: 🚆 vs. ✈️
Like many people, I’ve been taking some vacation and visiting my family in the UK over the summer. While looking into travel options, I’ve been trying to be more conscious about my carbon footprint and choose the train instead of flying whenever possible. But trains are almost always far more expensive, making it very difficult to choose the more environmentally friendly mode of transport.
For example, taking the train from Barcelona to Paris next weekend would cost 398€ round-trip and take 6 hours each way. Flying would cost 122€ round-trip and takes less than 2 hours (but then you have to factor in going to the airport and all that jazz). So why is that?
Research released by Greenpeace earlier this summer confirms this — they found that train tickets are on average twice as expensive as flights. The highest price differential they found was on the London to Barcelona route, where traveling by train was up to 30 times more expensive than by plane. For domestic flights, the UK has the highest price difference, with trains costing on average four times as much as planes.
Meanwhile, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s chosen mode of transport is the private jet — which also happens to be the dirtiest mode of transport out there. Private jets are estimated to have emitted a total of 5.3 million tonnes of CO2 in the last three years. That’s more carbon dioxide than Uganda emits in a year.
You might already have seen celebrities such as Taylor Swift make headlines about their jets’ carbon footprint. On July 29th, the website Yard — which tracks celebrities’ private plane use — found Swift to be the biggest celebrity CO2 polluter so far this year. At that point, her flying habits had emitted 8,293.54 tonnes of CO2. Forbes handily compared it to World Bank data from 2020 when the average global per capita carbon emission was 4.3 tons. This means Swift's private jet footprint alone was 1,928 times the global average. As the carbon footprint of the super-rich is an entire topic in itself, we hope to dig deeper into this in the future.
Back to us ordinary folks, because as long as planes are the cheapest option, people will keep choosing to fly. And this matters because aviation is by far the most polluting mode of transport out there. In addition to emitting CO2, jet fuel also produces other non-CO2 emissions when it burns like nitrogen oxides, soot, and water vapor — all of which contribute to warming.
Aviation is estimated to have contributed around 4% to observed human-induced global warming to date and emits more CO2 each year (around 1 billion tonnes) than most countries — and that figure is likely to rise. However, only around 3% of the global population currently fly regularly. So once again, inequalities play a big part here.
👶 Aviation is taking baby steps to clean up
The aviation industry swears that so-called Sustainable Aviation Fuel, or SAF — which is made from plants or waste organic materials — will help to decarbonize the sector. However, there are many challenges around scaling up the production of SAF, including risks of environmental harm, high costs, and a limited supply. According to climate publication Mongabay, the most promising biofuels in current scenarios likely won’t provide enough emissions savings to stem the aviation sector’s climate impacts.
Some countries in Europe have started making steps in the right direction. A ban on domestic flights of 2.5 hours or less was brought into effect in France earlier this year. The proposal was originally conceived in a climate citizen’s assembly and the government then made Air France’s compliance with the ban a condition of the €7 billion bailout it received during the pandemic.
Some critics have called the final plan “symbolic at best” because it’s been watered down significantly from the original proposal and will only affect three routes, reducing emissions by about 55,000 tons of CO2 per year. But hopefully, it will at least help to normalize domestic rail travel as the preferred option.
Austria introduced a similar ban on some short-haul flight routes and Spain is considering following suit, while Germany has increased taxes on domestic and intra-European flights by 75%.
Globally, the aviation sector is heavily subsidized because airlines don’t pay any fuel tax or VAT on international flights. Proposals to impose a tax on kerosene — the fuel used in jet engines — have been discussed in the European parliament, but reaching an agreement is difficult because it requires unanimous approval from all EU countries.
In the UK, a tax called Air Passenger Duty was introduced in 1994, making it the country with some of the highest aviation taxes in Europe (although the sector still receives tax exemptions that amount to €10.4 billion annually). However, APD was halved in April this year after strong lobbying from the aviation industry, while the government also increased rail fares by up to 5.9%.
💸 Fewer subsidies, more trains
Eliminating aviation subsidies could enable governments to make the investments needed to make trains more affordable. In the past years, various countries in Europe have been experimenting with some form of “climate ticket” — a kind of all-in-one ticket that offers free or discounted public transport.
Austria introduced its “Klimaticket” in October 2021, a single ticket that covers all means of public transport, anywhere in the country. However, the price tag of €1,095 for a year would make it out of reach for many. Germany, Hungary, and Slovenia have also introduced similar initiatives, while Spain, Malta, Luxembourg, and Estonia have all experimented with free or heavily discounted public transport.
Greenpeace is calling on governments to introduce a European-wide ticket valid for all means of public transport.
Another piece of good news is that Europe’s sleeper train network is set to expand. However, once again, policy adjustments are needed to make pricing competitive with current air travel costs, says campaigning group back-on-track.eu. Analysis by the group showed that setting a 0% rate VAT on cross-border routes and reducing track access charges — a standard charge levied at train operators that covers track maintenance — could lower train ticket prices by between 3% and 48%.
So, it’s pretty clear what governments need to do: agree to make the climate crisis the top priority in their transport policies, and then stand up to the aviation industry’s lobbyists. Add in taxing aviation properly and you might just have the recipe for cheaper train travel. As with so many things, it comes down to political will.
Climate jargon of the week
Sustainable Aviation Fuel (aka SAF)
As mentioned in this newsletter, current efforts to reduce aviation carbon emissions focus on the production of sustainable aviation fuels, which include both liquid biofuels made from things like algae, food crops, and food waste, as well as synthetic options such as green hydrogen or synthetic kerosene.
According to this informative article by Mongabay, a major challenge with SAFs is that, like fossil fuels, they still must be burned for a plane to fly and release carbon dioxide when ignited. Therefore, their potential benefits depend on cutting carbon emissions along the entire SAF supply chain and throughout their entire life cycle.
By 2050, it’s thought SAFs could make up 65% of “carbon mitigation” for the aviation sector. But to do so, 449 billion liters would need to be produced every year, far from the hundreds of thousands made annually now.