One Flight, One World, Zero Emissions

News | July 23, 2026

Carbon and long-haul flights: Europe must not miss its boarding call

An aircraft doesn't take off by abolishing gravity. It takes off by mastering it. The same is true of the ETS, Europe's carbon-credit system. You can see it as an extra weight loaded onto air transport. Or as the force that compels an entire industry to become more efficient.This July, the European Commission is expected to unveil its proposal on the mechanism's future. Bringing long-haul flights — until now exempt from the ETS — into its scope divides the aviation community, between defenders of the status quo and players, often newer ones, calling for a strong signal in favour of decarbonising the sector.We are at a fork in the road; two trajectories lie ahead of us. Let us gain some altitude to examine them.If air transport as a whole now falls under the ETS, airlines will have no choice but to hunt down every source of waste. Every kilo of fuel saved will count twice: it will cut not only their energy bill, but also the number of carbon allowances they have to buy. The room for improvement is immense, because the solutions already exist: optimising consumption with tools like SkyBreathe, towing aircraft to the runway with electric tugs, plugging planes into airports' electrical grid rather than running their auxiliary engines, avoiding absurd detours, making continuous-descent approaches standard, speeding up fleet renewal with the most fuel-efficient aircraft… Millions of litres of fuel are already saved this way; the ETS gives them the economic value they lacked to become the norm. Carbon stops being merely a cost: it becomes one more reason to invest in intelligence.Conversely, keeping long-haul flights outside the ETS would offer immediate relief, but would above all risk postponing the transformations we cannot do without. Airlines would remain dependent on a variable they don't control: the price and availability of oil. They would keep enduring its swings to feed a model of the past, instead of regaining control of their costs in order to invest in competitiveness.History shows that innovation changes the world when it becomes more advantageous than the status quo. That is precisely the role of well-designed rules of the game. A significant share of the revenues (estimated at nearly €9 billion a year) should therefore be reinvested in the aviation sector, in order to accelerate the very innovations it seeks to encourage — in particular sustainable fuels (for tomorrow) and green hydrogen (for the day after). A public policy is effective when it turns a constraint into a capacity to act.So yes, long-haul tickets will probably cost more during this transition, but they would remain infinitely cheaper than they were two or three decades ago. That added cost also tells a truth long kept hidden: the price of a flight has never reflected its climate cost. This signal will lead us to question the necessity of certain journeys and the value we place on each trip — and, above all, it will finance the emergence of clean aviation. Like any great industrial transformation, the transition has a price. The illusion would be to believe that standing still has none!The future of aviation will not depend on our ability to fly less — desirable, no doubt, but unrealistic given the aspirations of emerging countries in this field. It will depend on our ability to fly infinitely better.The challenge is not to choose between flying and protecting the climate. It is to ensure that one finally makes the other possible.First published by Le Temps and La Tribune.

News | May 13, 2026

The war in Iran has us talking about fossil fuels without even mentioning the climate

By Bertrand Piccard and Monica FrassoniThe current situation is costing Europe €500 million a day in additional fossil fuel import costs. And in the face of this energy crisis, just as with those that preceded it, our first instinct remains to increase supply: to look for more gas, more oil – elsewhere.That is precisely the mistake.The real issue is reducing unnecessarily high demand, fuelled by an economy still largely based on waste. Europe needs energy, of course, but filling a leaking bath has never been a smart strategy. Every year, hundreds of billions of euros leave the continent to buy oil, gas and fossil fuels that end up as smoke and pollution. They merely make up for avoidable losses at home. All that money fails to benefit our factories, our innovation or household purchasing power. Whereas the same sums invested in efficient solutions and local renewable energy production would create infrastructure capable of saving energy and generating cheaper electricity for decades to come.Europe’s real energy frontier does not lie in distant straits or at the end of pipelines. It lies in our poorly insulated buildings, our outdated combustion engines, our inflexible networks, our poorly managed consumption peaks, and the heat lost from our factories. It also lies in the exorbitant bills that millions of households struggle to pay.We must therefore reverse the logic: focus less on chasing supply, and more on managing demand. But the challenge goes beyond energy.What we need here is, in fact, a much broader principle: doing better with less.Energy efficiency is the first building block of this. It heralds a new economic model, based on optimising resources and creating value rather than on accumulating volume. For the climate as well as for sovereignty, for competitiveness as well as for quality of life, the real challenge is no longer to produce ever more. But to produce better. A way of getting environmentalists and industrialists, left-wing and right-wing parties, all pulling in the same direction!Efficiency can – and must – become the foundation of a new paradigm: a quality-driven economy in which we pay a little more for products that last longer – and where, ultimately, we buy less. An economy where performance is measured by the value created, not by the quantities produced. Where profit margins matter more than turnover. Where we produce better rather than ever more.One point must be made clear: efficiency is not punitive frugality. It does not mean depriving ourselves, even if questioning our habits is as desirable as it is beneficial. Efficiency means, first and foremost, eliminating waste without waiting for everyone to change their lifestyle. It means producing better with less, by making full use of digitalisation and electrification.This means high-performance heat pumps, electric motors, optimisation software, energy storage, heat recovery, smart buildings, high-performance materials and real-time network management. In short, intelligence applied to energy.Europe is not without resources: it is already a world leader in energy efficiency technologies, a sector that generates €150 billion in annual turnover and supports 1.2 million local jobs across the continent. The current situation must be a turning point for the emergence of true European champions in this field.As long as heating, transport and industry remain dependent on fossil fuels, Europe will remain vulnerable. Conversely, efficiency, coupled with electrification and the roll-out of renewables, will enable Europe to circulate electrons produced at home, rather than burning molecules from the other side of the world: a direct lever for sovereignty.Every inefficient boiler replaced, every building renovated, every factory modernised, every vehicle electrified is thus a strategic micro-victory. Taken together, these micro-victories can become a continental force.A crisis is paralysing when we are subjected to it, but it becomes an adventure when we decide to use it to evolve, to understand its mechanisms and to respond to it boldly. What if, rather than a threat, the current situation were a historic opportunity to break free from our dependencies, restore our sovereignty and reinvent our competitiveness – to shift towards a new paradigm?First published by La Tribune, Le Temps, La Libre and EFE Verde, and Domani.

News | May 7, 2026

We are burning our future to fuel the present

How many more wars will it take before we truly rethink our energy mix?Ukraine yesterday, the Middle East today – and tomorrow? With every crisis, prices soar, dependencies are exposed, and our certainties waver. Yet, once the emergency has passed, we forget that it is fossil fuels, not renewables, that are dangerously intermittent, unreliable and expensive. As if nothing were ever going to change.Worse still, certain recent developments run completely counter to what the situation demands. Just a few days ago, the German Minister for Economic Affairs and Energy, speaking at a conference on fossil fuels across the Atlantic, called on the EU to scale back its climate ambitions in the name of competitiveness. At the same time, the Trump administration forced TotalEnergies to abandon offshore wind projects in the United States in exchange for a billion dollars, conditional on equivalent investments in gas and oil projects.These developments are not trivial: they reflect extremely serious strategic errors, at the very moment when the Strait of Hormuz is closing.Every day, we strive to import fossil fuels. And what remains at the end of the day? CO2 in the atmosphere, smoke in our cities, and increased dependence. As if we were burning our future to fuel the present.Conversely, when we import solar panels, wind turbines or build smart grids – even if their manufacture is still dependent on China today – we are not buying a resource that will disappear: we are investing in infrastructure that will produce clean energy for thirty or forty years, and above all, at a much lower cost. Once installed and creating local jobs, they work for us – without ever sending us a geopolitical bill. They are a lever for sovereignty and competitiveness.But let’s be clear: renewables alone will not be enough to meet growing global demand. The key, in parallel – and at the risk of repeating myself – is energy efficiency: doing more with less. The cheapest energy is the energy we do not consume. Renovating, optimising, modernising – this immediately reduces our dependence without sacrificing comfort or value creation.In this transition, we must also move beyond posturing. For many countries, nuclear power is a necessary step: a controllable, low-carbon energy source capable of ensuring the stability of the system. Provided we invest fully in safety and research, particularly regarding waste management.And yet, our budgetary choices tell a very different story. The paradox is striking: whilst fossil fuels pollute, create dependency and are by nature finite – with oil reserves measured in decades – we continue to subsidise them to the tune of over $1.3 trillion a year – including nearly $60 billion in Europe – according to the IMF!Let us redirect these resources: towards renewables, towards efficiency, towards innovation – hydrogen, storage, smart grids – and towards nuclear research. Let us invest in what makes us self-sufficient, not in what makes us vulnerable.The end of fossil fuels is not a constraint. It is a triumph. This choice is far from being merely ecological. It is strategic. It is existential.First published by EFE Verde, Le Matin Dimanche, Investir (LesEchos), La Repubblica (Green&Blue).