Qantas is facing accusations it has misled customers by charging them extra to fly carbon-neutral and promoting itself as sustainable despite not having a credible plan to reduce its output of planet-heating pollution.
Environmental advocacy group Climate Integrity has asked the consumer watchdog to investigate the airline and urged it to follow a recent European Union crack down on airlines engaged in “greenwashing”.
Qantas is under fire over its sustainability claims. Credit: Brook Mitchell
A detailed complaint compiled by the Environmental Defenders Office and sent to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission targets Qantas’ claims that it is on track for “net zero emissions by 2050” and that customers can balance out the environmental impact of flying.
Climate Integrity director Claire Snyder said Qantas gave “a false impression of how sustainable flying is”, when in reality it was highly polluting and the industry had no clear path to decarbonising.
“Consumers are increasingly considering climate and sustainability in their decisions. If you don’t have clear information about what the impacts are, consumers can’t make informed decisions,” she said. “Exaggerating environmental credentials gives a false sense of progress at this very urgent time for deep emissions reductions”.
Qantas produced 17.6 million tonnes of CO2 emissions from its global operations in 2024, which is the equivalent of 4 per cent of Australia’s total annual emissions. Aviation produces around 2 per cent of the world’s emissions and faces a difficult task reducing them given its reliance on fossil fuels.
Qantas and budget arm Jetstar tell customers they can “fly carbon-neutral” by paying a fee ($5.60 for a Sydney-Melbourne return flight) which funds bushfire prevention, rainforest conservation and other environmental projects which “remove, reduce or avoid” carbon emissions.
But Snyder said it was false to equate carbon sequestered temporarily in land-based environmental projects with the carbon released permanently into the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels.
“Contributing a few dollars to conversation is a great thing to do, but it’s incorrect to think that somehow compensates for or neutralises the impact of your flight,” she said.
Qantas has set a target of reducing its net emissions by 25 per cent from 2019 levels by 2030 and reaching net zero by 2050. The airline says it will do that by increasing its use of lower-emitting biofuels from 0.2 per cent of its total fuel supply to 10 per cent by 2030, while continuing to rely heavily on carbon offsets.
Climate Integrity’s complaint takes aim at Qantas’ promotion of biofuels (or sustainable aviation fuels, SAF) as a climate solution, however, pointing out it is not in commercial production in Australia and there are questions over its viability. SAF production is on track to provide only 1 to 2 per cent of global aviation fuel use by 2027, according to the International Energy Agency.
A Qantas spokesperson said carbon offsets were key to meeting its net emissions while SAF production increased. The airline was helping establish a domestic biofuel industry through a $290 million partnership with Airbus, they said.
“Aviation is a particularly hard-to-abate sector, but we have a responsibility to do what we can with what’s available now,” the spokesperson said. “The journey to net zero emissions won’t be linear and one airline will not be able to solve this alone.”
A Dutch court ruled in March that national carrier KLM mislead customers by exaggerating the impact of planting trees and using biofuels, giving customers the false impression the airline was “sustainable”. The European Commission subsequently told 20 airlines to cease making similar misleading claims about sustainability.
In August, a landmark Federal Court greenwashing case brought by the corporate regulator resulted in Mercer Superannuation receiving an $11.3 million fine for making misleading statements about a sustainable product which in fact invested money into fossil fuels.
An ACCC spokesperson said it does not comment on potential investigations.
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