Ryanair, Europe’s greenest major airline, today (19 Feb) announced that it will invite customers to double their voluntary carbon offset contribution from €1 to €2 from 1^st April onwards. This modest increase forms part of Ryanair’s continuing sustainability campaign, which includes an investment worth over $20bn in new aircraft technology that will carry 4% more passengers, but with 16% lower fuel consumption and 40% lower noise emissions.

Currently more than 3% of Ryanair customers are participating in this voluntary carbon offset scheme. 100% of these funds go to supporting Ryanair’s environmental carbon offset projects. Over the last year, this has funded more than €500,000 worth of woodfire stoves in Uganda, and over €250,000 towards a reforestation project in the Monchique region of Southern Portugal, which was devastated by forest fires in 2018. With increased funds from this growing successful voluntary contribution scheme, Ryanair will aim to provide more funding to more partners in 2020.

Ryanair already has the lowest emissions of any major EU airline with just 66 grams of CO₂  per passenger kilometre. Passengers switching to Ryanair can reduce their CO₂ emissions by up to 50% compared to other legacy EU airlines. In December, Ryanair appointed its first Director of Sustainability to focus on, and deliver, the Groups ambitious sustainability program.

Director of Sustainability Tom Fowler said:

“We are pleased with the very positive response from our customers in 2019 to our voluntary Carbon Offset initiative. In addition to paying over €600m in environmental taxes last year, Ryanair has contributed over €1.5m towards carbon offset projects in Europe and Africa – and we are committed to doing more.

Our investments in new aircraft technology will enable us to carry more passengers, but with much lower fuel consumption and lower noise emissions. We are 60% of the way to being plastic free on board by 2024, and our customers are now contributing more than €1.5m p.a. towards carbon offset projects. We thank them sincerely for their support for our ambitious sustainability program.

100% of the funds raised through these voluntary carbon offset donations will be routed to our environmental partners, who are actively working on carbon offset and carbon reduction programs. With this modest increase in voluntary contributions, we can do more in 2020 and we look forward to unveiling more 2020 environmental partners in the coming months.”