World's First Green Fuel Levy To Add Almost $32 To Air Fares

Air passengers departing Singapore will pay a green fuel levy of as much as S$41.60 ($31.95) from next year as the city-state locks in a key step in its effort to cut the aviation industry's emissions. From a report: Travelers flying in economy and premium economy, as well as those on short-haul routes, will be charged far less. Those customers will pay an additional S$1 for trips to Southeast Asia, and S$10.40 for flights to the Americas, the Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore said Monday. Business and first class travelers will pay four times more, it said. [...] The funds collected from passengers will go to the centralized purchase of sustainable aviation fuel -- typically made from waste oils or agricultural feedstock -- as Singapore looks to achieve a SAF adoption rate of 3% to 5% by 2030.

$32... for first and business class airfares

[viperidaenz]

Only $8 for premium economy on a long haul flight across the Pacific.

In terms of relative prices, a economy flight from LAX might be $900, premium economy $1,500 and business class is more like $12,000 and first class is $20,000

So less than 1% tax. 0.5% for premium economy and 0.16% for first class.

It won't last.

[innocent_white_lamb]

'Carbon tax" generally faisl to stimulate a lot of investment in so-called renewable technology because there's no long term assurance that the tax will continue "forever". So an investment with a long term payback potential that could suddenly become a loser if the government changes or someone overhauls their tax policy has to provide a premium return to make investors take on the additional risk.

Re:

[hyades1]

Bullshit.

Re:

[innocent_white_lamb]

Thank you for posting your extensive, fully researched and well-reasoned argument.

We are thankful for your valuable contribution to this discussion.

Re:

[Frank Burly]

He posted just seven minutes after your post. Not even enough time to read your primary links, let alone the footnotes.

Re:

[hyades1]

Should I assume you need to eat the whole breakfast in order to figure out that the eggs are rotten?

Re: It won't last.

[unami]

No, but you might consider that the statement that's commented on contains no sources to back it up.

Re:

[hyades1]

I'm certainly capable of that, but I've learned when not to waste my time. Your statement is pretentious nonsense, and I treated it as such.

Re:

[thegarbz]

This has zero to do with investment, it has to do with eliminating insanely cheap holidays through taxation, and funding the purchase of SAF. It's a direct tax on customers, not on companies and it's not one a customer can avoid by doing anything other than not taking a plane. The duration of the taxes existence is irrelevant.

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[innocent_white_lamb]

The objective is to purchase "sustainable" aviation fuel, and thereby increase the demand for same.

That will require investment in the construction of additional capacity to create that fuel, unless there's a large surplus of unused fuel laying around somewhere. If there is, I'm not currently aware of it.

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[TwistedGreen]

Whale oil?

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[dunkelfalke]

Whale oil works for Dunwall, but probably not so much for Singapore.

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[test321]

One whale contains 1,900 litres of whale oil ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] ) ; one B747 aircraft uses 12 litres per km ( https://science.howstuffworks.... [howstuffworks.com] ). Assuming same calorific power, we obtain that 1 whale worth of whale oil powers a B747 for 158 km = 85.5 nmi

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[bn-7bc]

is that taxying on the ground, detruding take-off/climb or at carousing altitude?

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[timeOday]

Another way to go would be to keep burning jet fuel but purchase bricks of carbon from a sequestration company that captures it from the air.

I know there are more efficient types of carbon credits, like investing in cleaner energy in the first place, or increased efficient at the point of usage such as insulation, or preserving rainforest that would otherwise be developed.

The problem is all that gets complicated and thus subjective. Maybe carbon credits could work if it is based on a new type of 'coin'

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[thegarbz]

That will require investment in the construction of additional capacity to create that fuel

That investment won't come from tax, and won't come from airlines. Again this tax doesn't drive investment, it's not the point of it. The point is a flexible purchase agreement rather than regulation.

For your car there was a regulatory approach. The government said from day X you won't have more than Y amount of sulfur in the fuel. That fuel was already available so they can do that. SAF as you rightly pointed out does not have a lot of capacity (in fact the two largest SAF plants in the world had construct

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[bn-7bc]

well As lomg as it's a fixed fee (as iit seams to be) it shuld be esy to make shoe it's included i the price when you compare prices between airlines, not the bs we have noww with you seing on price and manually have to add about 15 bs fees. look I don't care where my money ends up(øocal taxes, airline, airport authority) I just know what i need to pay in bldy total, and for people in the US yes this include VAT/sales tax). I have no issue with getting an itemized receipt afterword's, but baring any ch

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[AmiMoJo]

It would be nice if the money was invested in alternative forms of rapid transport, like high speed rail. I'd take the train if there was one.

Absurdity

[SlashbotAgent]

city-state locks in a key step in its effort to cut the aviation industry's emissions.

As if this pimple on the ass of the world could ever have enough air traffic for such a measure to have any impact whatsoever.

This nonsense does two things only:

1. More money for the government.
2. Less poors on Singaporean flights.

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[bn-7bc]

which is not necessarily a bad thing, with the amount iof debt carried by certain governments, they might need it to just keep up with interest payments, let's not think about what happens the day they are unable to roll over the matured debt into new bonds at any price, that will make the current (and record breaking) US shutdown look like a minor road bump).

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[SlashbotAgent]

I have no idea what "iof debt" is. But, Government debt is not a Singaporean problem. They are very strong financially.

Individual airlines already do this

[BeaverCleaver]

e.g, Finnair has a "sustainable aviation fuel" fee as a line item it its tickets: https://www.finnair.com/en/sus... [finnair.com]

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[thegarbz]

No, individual airlines *OFFER* this. It is currently enforced by none, including Finnair. On the flip side if you travel through Singapore or from Singapore you're forced to pay the fee. That's very different.

Also Finnair's own page says they use less than 0.5% SAF. at present, quite a bit away from what Singapore hopes to do.

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[bn-7bc]

Well finair as otherisyes since the Ukrain war and related sanvtions) they lost theist Siberian shortcut to Asia, and as such lost thee one advantage theist main Helsinki hub had when it comes to flights to/from Asia

I don't support growing fuel

[WaffleMonster]

There are already enough dependencies between food and energy production without intentionally making the problem worse.

Well...

[devslash0]

Looks like the S$ in the currency symbol(s) could be a good indication of what type of people pushed this legislation through.

World's first?

[whoever57]

Hasn't the UK been doing this for years? Levying a fee based on total distance of your journey?

Re: World's first?

[Malc]

The Air Passenger Duty tax is significantly more expensive: https://www.gov.uk/government/... [www.gov.uk]

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[thegarbz]

Hasn't the UK been doing this for years? Levying a fee based on total distance of your journey?

No. Most countries levy a passenger tax, but as far as I am aware none of those taxes go to targeted investment and all go back into the general treasury. Taxes aren't green simply because they are levied on airline passengers. They are green based on what they are spent on. The taxes from the UK was introduced back before we had an environment (yes this is a joke, but the point is in 1994 the word "carbon" was unknown in the the general vernacular"

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[whoever57]

Because money is the ultimate fungible commodity, the headline should really be:

"Singapore to subsidize production and use of sustainable aviation fuel"

I am skeptical that the "sustainable aviation fuel" is really sustainable and it isn't just disguised fossil fuel (like almost all hydrogen production for vehicles).

Good Solution for Singapore, Bad Priority for USA

[eepok]

Context is Everything! Before people start going off about how dumb of an idea this is, this is about SINGAPORE.

In the US, light-duty trucks (pickup trucks) emit nearly 5x the total annual GHG than commercial air travel and a huge proportion of those pick-up trucks are vanity vehicles. This airline levy isn't nor should it be a high-priority levy for the US.

For Singapore, where it's very difficult to own a car ($20k/yr + fuel + parking), vehicle emissions aren't really their focus and commercial air is.

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[thegarbz]

This airline levy isn't nor should it be a high-priority levy for the US.

This is a dumb take. You're implying that a country with 330million people are only able to do one thing at a time? Yeah okay the government was shutdown for a few weeks but it's open again. There's more than one employee and you can focus on two things at once. Airlines is still 2.5% of the emissions of the most carbon polluting per capita country in the west. It remains something worth going after, especially since the tiny penis brigade won't let you pry their monster trucks from their cold dead hands.

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[AmiMoJo]

At this point, any significant emitter is a high priority. We can't afford to do all this stuff sequentially, we have to parallelize our efforts.

haha

[groobly]

Haha, just a money grab.