Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (EFE).- The entire tourism sector in the Canary Islands has turned to the Spanish Government to continue pressing the European Commission so that the exemptions granted to the islands in the green taxation of air transport that comes into force in 2024 they will also be extended to international flights, because it considers that its future is at stake in it.
For the moment, Brussels has accepted that flights between islands and connections between the Canary Islands and the rest of Spain are exempt from the new payments for CO2 emissions until 2030, but not flights between the archipelago and third countries of the EU and much less those that unite the islands with their first tourist client, the United Kingdom.
This tax measure, included in the “Fit for 55” package, seeks to reduce the large greenhouse effect emissions caused by commercial aviation in the world (665 million tons in 2017) and, incidentally, push the sector to bet on the development of aircraft and fuels with a lower carbon footprint.
But, how much do these emissions represent in one of the main holiday destinations in the world, the Canary Islands, where tourism contributes 35% of GDP and 40% of employment? A report from the University of La Laguna (Tenerife) gives you figures for the first time: the planes that bring and take back home international tourists who enjoy their holidays in the Canary Islands emit an average of 6.41 million tons of CO2 per year, between 2 and 3% of everything attributable to the aviation sector in Europe.
Those 6.41 million tons of CO2 do not compute in the emissions that the Canary Islands declare as their own (11.80 million in 2017), but they do allow the authors of this work to establish a comparison, published in the magazine “Sustainability” (2021 ): they are equivalent to 54.33% of all emissions from the islands.
More CO2 emissions than power plants
If they were part of the figures that the Canary Islands recognize as caused by its economy in its Energy Yearbook, they would only be ahead of the emissions from power plants and industry, with 6.54 million tons per year, and would be 23% higher than all internal or national transport (land, sea and air), which contributes 5.21 million. In fact, they multiply by 10 the emissions of national air transport generated by the Canary Islands.
Those responsible for this work calculated the emissions of international air transport with origin or destination in the Canary Islands taking as a reference the traffic of the five years prior to the covid-19 pandemic (2015-2019). In other words, the same activity figures that tourism and aviation have just recovered in 2022 in the Canary Islands after the deep crisis into which the covid plunged them.
The authors of the work recall that there is no archipelago in the world far from the continent that has a continuous flow of international tourists like the one that the Canary Islands present, of around one million people per month, without major seasonal peaks.
Which countries are the highest CO2 emitters on flights to the Canary Islands? They coincide with the main clients of the islands: the United Kingdom, with 2.35 million tons per year (36.7% of those attributable to international air transport in the Canary Islands); Germany, with 1.43 million (22.3%); Sweden, with 319,805 tons (5.0%); The Netherlands, with 267,007 (4.2%); Norway, with 252,142 (3.9%); Ireland, with 238,474 (3.7%); and Italy, with 224,540 (3.3%).
In the emissions per tourist another variable comes into play, which causes the order to change: the distance from your country to the Canary Islands. The tourists who release the most CO2 into the atmosphere every time they fly to the Canary Islands were the Russians (who have been banned from entering since the invasion of Ukraine), with 720 kilos per person (round trip), followed by the Finns, with 650 kilos. , and the Swedes, with 600.
British and Germans, who account for half of the tourism in the Canary Islands, cause the same amount of emissions, 470 kilos per person.
480 kilos of CO2 per European and trip
The average CO2 emissions from a round-trip tourist flight to the Canary Islands is 480 kilos per person, which means, highlights this study, that each tourist who flies to the Canary Islands emits twice the CO2 generated on that trip alone on average each European in all his air travel for a year (250 kilos).
Above are, however, the emissions of tourist flights to Hawaii (590 kilos of CO2 per passenger from Los Angeles or from Tokyo and one ton from New York) or flights to other long-distance destinations, such as Bali or the Maldives, with more than 800 kilos per person in both cases. The tourist islands close to the European continent have lower emission levels, due to their geographical location: 310 kilos in Malta and 260 kilos in the Balearic Islands.
Another way of examining the issue, according to the authors, is to analyze the relative weight of round-trip flights to the Canary Islands in the total CO2 generated by the consumption of a European citizen after one year, a relative indicator, which in turn depends on the level of development and industrialization of the country.
The result is this: for a British person, flying to the Canary Islands represents 8.10% of their annual CO2 emissions; for a German, 5.36%; for a Swede, 13.64%; for a Norwegian, 7.18%; for a Frenchman, 9.57%; for an Irishman, 5.70%; for a Dutchman, 4.60%; for an Italian, 8.97%; and for a Swiss, 11.95%.
With these data and in a context of growing concern among European tourists about the carbon footprint of their trips, the authors underline the importance for the Canary Islands of persuading them with measures that demonstrate environmental commitment. And also the need for CO2 emission reduction measures to be “sensitive” to the “fragility” of economies “highly dependent on aviation”, as is the case with the islands, where almost 100% of tourists arrive by transport aerial. EFE