An environmental campaign group has said expanding capacity at EU airports is incompatible with climate targets.
Transport & Environment (T&E), a think-tank based in Brussels, says current air traffic growth projections will cancel out most of the efforts from the aviation sector to reduce its emissions, and flights from EU airports could be burning as much kerosene in 2049 as they were in 2023.
Most EU airlines, including Ryanair and Aer Lingus, are committed to reaching net zero emissions by 2050.
However a report, called "Down to Earth" published today by T&E, says emissions from the European aviation sector will drop by less by than 3% in the 30 years up to 2049.
Sustainable Aviation Fuel ,or SAF, is central to most net zero plans in the sector but the report predicts "truly sustainable feedstocks for sustainable aviation fuels will not be available in sufficient quantities to cater for growth in demand".
"The aviation industry plans to rely heavily on biofuels as an alternative to fossil kerosene - most of which do not come from sustainable feedstocks. As a result, as of 2035, more aviation biofuels will be consumed that can be sustainably produced."
T&E Aviation Director Jo Dardenne said: "The numbers leave you speechless. The aviation industry's plans for growth are completely irreconcilable with Europe’s climate goals and the scale of the climate crisis.
"In a year, the sector will have exceeded its carbon allowance. A paradigm shift and real climate leadership are needed now to address the problem, or Europe’s planes will be eating up everyone else's resources. The credibility of the sector is on the line."
The report claims that the EU, which has set a target of reducing net emissions by 90% from 1990 levels by 2040, is giving the aviation sector a free pass.
Ms Dardenne said: "We applaud the European Commission’s world-beating 90% emissions reduction target. But such a target is completely meaningless without concrete policies to reduce emissions from aviation. The sector has been given countless free passes in its history - now it is time to change course.
"The EU needs to come up with a plan to address the tonnes and tonnes of aviation emissions released in the atmosphere every year."
The report says that aircraft makers Airbus and Boeing project that passenger traffic will double between 2019 and 2050 and says this scenario "paints a concerning, yet plausible future, depicted by the aviation industry where EU passenger traffic grows on average by 3.3% annually from 2023 to 2050".
It says that growth will lead to the sector burning as much of the fossil fuel, kerosene in 2049 as it did in 2023 and predicts that overreliance on biofuels will mean that by 2050 "four out of every litre of biofuel supplied could derive from feedstocks that are not truly sustainable".
The most sustainable aviation fuel would be E-kerosene which is produced from green hydrogen and carbon.
But the report warns that while this fuel is green and scalable it could not be produced in quantities sufficient to decarbonise aviation if the predicted growth levels are reached.
It says those levels would require more than total amount of energy consumed by Germany in 2023 or sufficient to power 160 million heat pumps for a year, almost twice as much as needed to replace the 86 million gas and oil boilers still in use in homes across the EU.
