The Geneva, Switzerland-based Climate Jet Club initiative, which proposes a carbon neutral programme to private aviation users, signed an agreement on 30 July with NGOs myclimate and ecoLive. Both organisations provide consulting and advisory services as well as educational programmes in the field of sustainability and CO2 offsetting programmes.

The Climate Jet Club Card, which is a CO2 ‘credit card’, aims to make flyers more aware of the impact their travels have on the environment by encouraging them to use less polluting aircraft and by planning ahead their CO2 emissions based on their known travelling habits. For example, 20,000kg of CO2 credit will offer users three times more flight time on a PC-12 than on a PC-24. Once the credit is up, users commit to stop flying or to use other means of transportation. CO2 emissions per aircraft type will be made possible by a myclimate online platform that takes into account such parameters as taxiing, take-off, cruising and aircraft recycling. The compensation amount is billed upfront and after each flight, the traveller receives a certificate proving their carbon neutrality. They can also trace funds to audited sustainable Golden Standard projects around the world such as fighting deforestation in Kenya and enabling clean drinking water initiatives in Uganda.

“We believe that business aviation has a negative impact on the environment,” says Nicolas Ketterer, marketing and communication manager at ecoLive. “Private jet travellers generate much more greenhouse gases than airline passengers. Nowadays, taking into account the UN's Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Accord, we must find ways to fight this feeling that flying is not that bad for climate change, and we are happy to see innovations such as the one proposed by the Climate Jet Club that participate in an effort to change habits of such travellers in the hope that this will lead the way to changing habits in general.”

This partnership with leading NGOs in the field of climate protection is designed to bring funding to sustainable projects in Africa, but also in Switzerland, Germany or China and at the same time bring awareness to the most fortunate by educating rather than by punishing them.