As one of the UK’s leading leisure travel providers taking millions of customers away on holiday, Jet2 plc aspires to be “the leading brand in sustainable air travel and package holidays”. Accordingly, our primary focus at Jet2 continues to be on reducing CO2 emissions, which in many cases also helps address the less well understood impacts of non-CO2 emissions. Our Jet2 Net Zero Sustainability Strategy has set stretching but pragmatic targets: On the Ground, In the Air and In Resort, embedding sustainability at every stage of the Jet2 customer journey.
PROGRESS AGAINST OUR TARGETS
To ensure the efficient consumption of energy and a reduction in our emissions, we have implemented policies to ensure that energy use is managed appropriately across all our UK offices. The Group purchases only renewable REGO-backed electricity in all buildings which we own or where we are responsible for utility charges.
Jet2.com now manages ground handling at seven of its ten UK bases and, accordingly, have been investing heavily in improving the carbon efficiency of ground service equipment (“GSE”). We believe one of the most effective ways to reduce our GSE CO2 emissions is to transition from combustion engine to electric (either fully electric or hybrid) powered alternatives. Currently, 47% of our GSE fleet is electric powered, and with additional equipment on order, over 50% of our ground handling equipment will be either fully electric or hybrid by the end of 2023.
Carbon offsetting is a mechanism established in response to the Paris Agreement to compensate for unavoidable CO2 emissions by investing in projects that reduce, avoid, or remove carbon from the atmosphere. Jet2 purchase only high quality Gold Standard, Verified Carbon Standard, or UN Clean Development Mechanism credits in order to offset all direct emissions from its business activities not included in the ETS and CORSIA schemes. This includes covering airline free allowances, office energy use and emissions from ground service equipment. We are pleased to be able to say that we pay for every tonne of carbon we emit, and our Customers are safe in the knowledge that we have their carbon covered!
We are engaging with our UK airport partners and waste handling contractors to measure all aircraft cabin waste and establish a baseline. This has been particularly challenging post-Brexit due to changes in waste categorisation. Aircraft catering waste arising from non-UK flights (e.g. sandwich wrappers and coffee cups) is classed as Category 1 International Catering Waste (“ICW”) and cannot be recycled as per current regulations. However, we are working closely with our suppliers to establish ways of safely segregating recyclable cabin waste from ICW and to set a realistic but ambitious recycling target.
We used 15.8 million single use products onboard our aircraft during the year, including cups, cutlery, stirrers, drink lids and plastic bags, with 79% made from more sustainable alternative materials such as wood and recycled plastic. Consequently, we remain on course to exceed our target of an 80% reduction in single use plastics by 31 December 2023.
The removal of Covid-19 related travel restrictions from early 2022 resulted in a significant increase in consumer demand for leisure travel during the year.
Consequently, aircraft CO2 emissions per passenger kilometre for the year reduced 20% to 65.9 gCO2 (2022: 82.0 gCO2 per passenger km). Against 2020, this represents a 1.6% reduction against our pre-pandemic metric of 67.0 gCO2 per passenger km, putting the business in a strong position to achieve our target of 65.0 gCO2 per passenger kilometre by 2025.
Furthermore, we expect our carbon efficiency to increase as our order of new Airbus A321/A320neos progressively enter into operational service and certain older, less efficient aircraft are retired.
During April 2023, Jet2 plc made a significant investment into a new Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) production plant to be constructed in the North West of England – one of the first such deals in UK aviation. SAF is a low emission, drop-in fuel which reduces emissions by approximately 70% compared to conventional jet fuel over its lifecycle.
The Group initially anticipated that this production facility would be able to provide SAF from 2026, however we are currently engaging with other producers to uplift UK produced SAF during 2026, which would ensure our target is achieved.
For more information, please click the links below.
Our ambition to have a hotel sustainability labelling scheme in place by the end of 2022 has been delayed primarily due to the hotel sector being one of those hardest hit by the pandemic. Consequently, hoteliers' primary focus this year has been one of recovery. Therefore, we have taken a pragmatic approach in continuing discussions with our hotel partners and the GSTC, to ensure they have adequate time to commit the resources necessary to implement the scheme successfully. Nevertheless, the delivery of this scheme remains a high priority for the business and this will be delivered by the end of 2023.
Jet2holidays is currently engaging with the GSTC and hotel partners regarding a recognised sustainability certification scheme and more details will be published on this during the remainder of 2023.
CURRENT YEAR PERFORMANCE
Streamlined Energy and Carbon Reporting metrics
We monitor our energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) in line with the Streamlined Energy and Carbon Reporting (SECR) requirements and we use gCO2 per passenger kilometre to measure our carbon intensity – this is the most widely used metric for the aviation sector.
In the year ended 31 March 2023, total Scope 1 and 2 carbon equivalent emissions (tCO2e) were 2,645,599 tonnes (2022: 983,196 tonnes) with over 99% arising from our aircraft operations. The remaining emission sources were ground handling activities, together with our business travel, offices, training and engineering facilities. In addition to reporting Scope 3 upstream emissions from aviation fuel, this year our Scope 3 emissions calculations have been expanded to include business travel, corporate flights and train journeys. Although expanding the breadth of our GHG reporting, these new Scope 3 additions account for less than 0.2% of total reported Scope 3 emissions.
The table below sets out total energy consumption and resulting GHG emissions by Scope arising from business operations.
| 2023 | 2022 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Scope | tCO2e | kWh | tCO2e | kWh |
| Scope 1 |
2,644,164 |
10,674,111,54 | 982,032 | 3,963,923,295 |
| Scope 2 | 1,436 | 7,424,171 | 1,164 | 5,480,816 |
| Scope 3 | 549,817 | 8,561,731 | 204,465 | 2,505,704 |
| Total | 3,195,417 | 10,690,097,444 | 1,187,661 | 3,971,909,815 |
| Intensity Ratios | ||||
| gCO2per passenger km aircraft fuel burn only† | 65.9 | 82.0 | ||
| gCO2per passenger km including all relevant scope 1, 2 & 3 emissions† | 80.5 | 99.4 | ||
† Metric uses EU ETS emissions factors and includes aircraft fuel burn only (please see methodology)
‡ Emissions included are explained in the methodology section.
GHG emissions are categorised into three Scopes as defined below:
