On average, a survey by Greenpeace last week found, European train tickets are double the price of flights for the same routes. At one extreme, the survey reported that to get from London to Barcelona, the cost of taking the train can be up to 30 times the cost of jumping on a plane (Ryanair flight: €12.99, train: €384).
Meanwhile, holiday destinations across Europe this week have been baking in deadly heat made hotter by greenhouse gases released from burning fossil fuels. And the aviation industry is responsible for about 2.5 per cent of global carbon pollution.
A large part of this absurd, deeply damaging, disequilibrium in the transport market between polluting aviation and relatively clean rail is attributable to the reality that in Europe airlines pay no taxes on kerosene, only pay a fraction of the full carbon price on their emissions, and little or no tax on tickets or VAT. Railways have to pay energy taxes, VAT and high rail tolls in most countries.
A study published earlier this month by Transport and Environment, a green campaign group, found that in 2022 European governments lost out on some €34 billion in potential revenue, a “tax gap”, from failure to properly levy aviation on its real environmental costs, and predicted the loss would rise to €47 billion by 2025. It put Ireland’s current aviation tax gap at €0.8 billion.
The top 15 European polluting airlines benefited from €11.8 billion in fuel and emission pricing exemptions in 2022, it said, Ryanair alone by €1.3 billion. Yet ending tax exemptions in Europe, Greenpeace estimates, could have cut emissions significantly, with the same climate impact as taking all German cars off the road for a year
Bridging that tax gap in Ireland, the Transport and Environment report recommends, would necessitate ticket price increases of €22 on domestic flights, €2 on intra-Europe flights, and €308 on flights outside Europe. Painful, yes, but it might go some way to paying for those rail lines to Donegal and elsewhere that Minister for Transport Eamon Ryan is promising.