Brussels is lobbying for an international tax on aeroplane fuel as governments look to levies on polluting industries to finance climate action.
Wopke Hoekstra, the EU’s climate commissioner, has said that China, Zambia, Brazil and the Gulf nations are among those that have expressed interest in such a tax in talks leading up to the UN’s COP28 climate summit starting in Dubai on Thursday. Unlike other fuels, kerosene is exempt from tax throughout the world.
The levy would be a way to generate “a substantial amount of money” with a “relatively small sum” charged per flight, Hoekstra said in an interview with a group of journalists in Brussels. It also had “an element of fairness to it because it is typically those from Europe and North America and other more affluent countries that fly more”.