Creating jobs with climate-friendly travel

Tackling the climate crisis is going to mean making some big changes for the better. And a key change is reducing the amount of flights that are taken - in the UK and around the world. Aviation, however, employs lots of people, from cabin crew to pilots, from airport staff to aeronautical engineers.

So the question is, how do we reduce the number of flights to protect the climate while also protecting people working in aviation?

We decided to team up with Autonomy to take a look and got a rather surprising answer - reducing flights and replacing them with climate-friendly ways of travelling could give the UK the opportunity to create a huge number of jobs. In fact, if we reduced flights, for every job that was lost, about three could be created in its place.

We looked at two scenarios - the first reducing flight demand by half and the second by two thirds. Both scenarios also explored an increase in journeys made on lower carbon modes of transport, an increase in domestic tourism and a ramp-up in the use of alternative fuels made from renewable electricity to replace current plane fuel, kerosene.

If passengers moved to lower-emissions forms of transport, then enough jobs would be created to more than compensate for those lost from the reduction in flights. Jobs could be created in industries including rail, low-emissions ferries, domestic tourism and the research and development of cleaner fuels generated from electricity, which could be used to reduce emissions from remaining flights.

In the scenario which reduced aviation demand by half, around 139,000 jobs were lost and 422,000 jobs were created, generating a net increase in employment of around 283,000. In the scenario which reduced aviation by two thirds, 187,000 jobs were lost and 521,000 created, providing a net increase in jobs of around 337,000.

A little-known fact is that jobs per passenger in aviation have also been in decline for a while - a trend that is expected to continue into the future. The recovery in passenger numbers from the impact of Covid is also expected to be lengthy, and employment is expected to take longer to recover than passenger numbers.

So what can we do? Well, if we make the right investments now in green transport and supporting people moving from high-carbon sectors to low-carbon sectors, we’ll create good, green jobs and protect both people and the climate.

And what do aviation workers think? We surveyed more than 1,000 people working in aviation. We found that just 21% of respondents thought that the industry offered them secure employment for the future, and that financial support would be useful for them to move into another sector. It’s vital that, as we transition to a greener economy, we do everything we can to protect workers and encourage employment in other sectors.

What next?

As well as support for climate-friendly alternatives to plane travel, we’re calling for a frequent flyer levy - a progressive tax which increases as someone takes more flights, or flies greater distances, every year. This means that people who save for an occasional holiday or family visit wouldn’t be unfairly impacted, but the minority who fly multiple times each year would pay more. This would allow us to tackle climate change in a fair way which shares access to remaining flights more equitably.

We’re also calling for a “right to retrain” scheme - a support scheme for people working in aviation who would like to move into lower-carbon sectors. The report estimates that the annual cost of this scheme, along with the required investment in increased research within aviation and the new clean energy capacity required for e-fuels, would be around £9.5 billion, of which just under £8bn billion would be additional funding - a similarly sized sum to the aviation industry’s annual pre-Covid £7bn tax breaks.