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Carbon dioxide emissions from private jets rose by nearly 50 percent in four years, research has found, driven by a shift in the post-pandemic travel habits of the wealthy, including a large number of flights for major global events.
The most common private jets generated annual emissions hundreds of times greater than the average person’s total carbon footprint, according to the study of more than 25,000 aircraft between 2019 and 2023.
The research, was published on Thursday in the journal Communications Earth & Environment, highlights the hundreds of flights to and from high-profile international gatherings – including the UN’s COP climate meetings where countries are pushing to limit global warming. The large increase will affect officials who are preparing to gather in Azerbaijan to Climate conference COP29 next week.
The findings underlined the sector’s sustained boom after wealthy users switched to private jets to continue long-haul travel as Covid forced lockdowns around the world.
They also showed a “fundamental disregard for climate change at the top of society,” said Stefan Gössling, the paper’s lead author and a professor at Linnaeus University’s School of Economics and Business.
“Private aircraft are used as taxis in many cases, never mind the climate consequences,” he added. “The wider population will not understand why they should reduce emissions if the peak is not regulated – or set an example.”
Gössling and colleagues examined tracking data from 18,655,789 private flights involving 25,993 registered private jet aircraft between 2019 and 2023, representing the vast majority of the sector’s activity. They estimated CO₂ emissions for each flight using advertised fuel consumption levels for each aircraft.
The researchers calculated that the flights produced 15.6 million tons of CO₂ in direct emissions in 2023. That represented a 46 percent increase from the 2019 figure and accounted for about 1.8 percent of total emissions from commercial aviation last year.
The 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar was associated with 1,846 flights; the World Economic Forum in Switzerland last year, with 660; and the COP28 conference in the United Arab Emirates, with 291. The highest single emitters – based on an analysis of aircraft registration numbers – produced more than 500 times more CO₂ from flights than the overall global average emissions per person, based on 2020 World Bank figures, found the researchers.
Many wealthy individuals have continued to use private jets since the end of the pandemic, attracted by privacy, personal service and convenience. The rise of companies offering shared ownership or “bare-leg” repositioning flight bookings has also made the industry more affordable.
There were 5.1 million private flights in 2023, 15 percent more than in 2019, according to data from aviation consultant WingX.
Some parts of the industry have tried to become more sustainable, mainly by offering customers carbon offsets or cleaner “sustainable aviation fuels” on their flights.
Victor, an Abu Dhabi-based private jet charter company, said more than 500 customers had opted to add an extra £1,000 to their bills to reduce emissions from their flights by using slightly cleaner fuels.
Although air travel is not the biggest source of pollution, accounting for 3 percent of global emissions, environmental groups have called for private jets to be subject to much heavier taxes. Fuel used in private aviation is generally untaxed around the world.
Britain announced last week higher taxes on some private jet flights in its budget, which the industry said would not deter fliers.
Gössling called for the sector to be “regulated to grow at a lower rate”, for example by raising landing fees to discourage both shorter flights and passenger-free flights to airports where fees are lower.
Private aviation emissions would probably be two or three times higher if other greenhouse gases were taken into account, said Felix Creutzig, group leader at the Berlin-based Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change.
He called for greater regulation of the sector, saying “super-rich individuals are role models and their choices matter beyond their individual footprints”.
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