Private jets and their climate cost are back at the heart of the debate. LFI deputies asked the government on Monday to ban the use of private jets, criticized for their very high carbon footprint, and tabled a bill to this effect. “We cannot ask to lower the heating in thermal colanders, (…) to have responsible behavior and exonerate a minority who are burning the planet”, declared the elected LFI of Seine-Saint-Denis Thomas Portes, author of the text, during a press conference at the Assembly. “It is an urgent measure ecologically, the movements in jets are ultra-polluting when they are reported to a person”, he insisted.
These private jets have been the subject of a lively controversy for several weeks, with environmental activists calling for their supervision or even their ban. The text plans to prohibit from January 1, 2023 “the circulation of private planes chartered at the request of an individual or a company outside conventional commercial flights”. A derogation is provided for “medical evacuation” flights or flights concerning “national security”. It also provides for the implementation of a redeployment and retraining plan for affected employees. The LFI group has not included the bill on the menu for the day of November 24, for which it decides the agenda (“parliamentary niche”), but it intends by tabling this text to put a form of ” pressure” on the executive, according to LFI deputy Antoine Léaument.
31% increase in CO2 emissions
On Sunday, Ecological Transition Minister Agnès Pannier-Runacher said that all sectors must participate in decarbonisation, but that it would not be “serious” to suggest that a “fight (on) jets” would solve ” the whole problem”.
Transport Minister Clément Beaune, who himself called at the end of August to “regulate private jet flights”, repeated on Sunday that “behaviours must change”. He mentioned the track of “taxation measures” on aviation which has “a tax regime more favorable than certain modes of transport”.
Business aviation has grown by 16% in three years, according to Eurocontrol, the traffic monitoring body. Between 2005 and 2019, CO2 emissions from private jets in Europe increased by 31%, according to a study by Transportation & Environment, which brings together European NGOs in the sector. A proposal to ban private jets in the event of a pollution threshold exceeded was also presented by the environmental group to the Senate at the end of July.