🏷️ 5 million Lufthansa "Green Fares" just lost the word green. Would your "carbon-neutral trip" claim survive the same rule?

This week

The best-known "green" airfare in Europe has just dropped the word green. On 23 October Lufthansa Group renamed its Green Fare, booked by more than 5 million passengers since 2023. It's now called the Impact Fare. The product itself hasn't changed: on flights within Europe, Lufthansa buys extra sustainable aviation fuel to cover 20% of the flight's estimated CO₂ and pays into climate projects for the other 80%. On intercontinental flights the split is 10/90. What changed is the claim it can make. In March 2025 a Cologne court ruled that Lufthansa misled customers by suggesting that paying extra made a flight climate-neutral. On 27 September 2026 the EU rules came into force that blacklist "carbon neutral" claims based on offsets. If one of Europe's largest airline groups can't call a ticket green, can your company still call a business trip "carbon neutral"?

Why it matters

1. The airline's wording was often your wording. Many sustainability pages and client proposals say "our business travel is offset" because the airline or a booking tool offered that option. Under the new EU rules a claim that a product or service is neutral because of offsets outside its own value chain is banned in consumer-facing communication, whatever the quality of the credits.

2. Offsets don't reduce your reported emissions anyway. If you report under CSRD, ESRS E1 requires gross Scope 3 emissions, and that includes business travel. Purchased carbon credits can't be counted in that figure. A green fare surcharge may be a fine thing to fund. It doesn't make the number on your report smaller.

3. Enforcement is now coordinated, not occasional. In November 2025, 21 European airlines committed to EU consumer authorities to stop claiming that paying for climate projects or alternative fuels neutralises a flight's emissions. Lufthansa's rename shows that pressure now reaches product names, not just ads. Companies that repeat the same claims face the same rules.

What this means for your program

• Search your own materials for "carbon neutral", "climate neutral" and "offset". Check sustainability pages, proposals and event invitations. Any travel-related claim that rests on offsets should be rewritten or removed.
• Decide what Impact Fares are for in your policy. If travelers book them, treat the extra cost as a climate contribution and record it that way, not as an emissions reduction.
• Measure gross travel emissions per trip, by department and route. That's the number regulators and auditors will ask for, and the one you can actually bring down.
• Shift the effort to what changes the total. Rail instead of short-haul flights, fewer one-day round trips, economy on shorter routes. These cut gross emissions. Offsets don't.

The numbers

• 5 million+: passengers who booked a Lufthansa Green Fare since February 2023, about 1.2% of the group's 389.1 million passengers in that period. (Voyages d'Affaires, 27 Oct 2026; Business Travel Executive, 27 Oct 2026)
• 20/80 and 10/90: the split between extra SAF and climate-project payments in an Impact Fare, on European and intercontinental flights. (One Mile at a Time, 23 Oct 2026)
• 21 March 2025: the Cologne Regional Court (case 84 O 29/24) barred Lufthansa from advertising that contributions to climate projects offset a flight's CO₂. (Deutsche Umwelthilfe, 24 Mar 2025)
• 27 September 2026: the date national rules under the EU Empowering Consumers Directive (2024/825) apply, banning generic green claims and offset-based "neutral" claims. (EUR-Lex, Directive (EU) 2024/825; Certivo)
• 21 airlines: carriers including Air France, KLM, Ryanair, easyJet, SAS and six Lufthansa Group airlines committed in November 2025 to stop saying passengers can neutralise their flight's emissions by paying extra. (European Commission; European Sting, 10 Nov 2025)

Two tools built exactly for this moment

A claim you can defend starts with records you can show: every trip, what it cost, who approved it and why.

• Travel Code Expense Management →: receipt capture, automatic checks against your policy, and approval routing, with bookings and card transactions reconciled in one ledger. A climate surcharge sits on the same line as the ticket it was paid for, and everything exports to Excel for your finance and sustainability teams.
• Travel Code Net-60 Card →: 60-day settlement at 0% interest, per-transaction visibility, and budget rules that auto-freeze at 80%. Every travel payment is visible line by line the same day, so the spend behind your emissions report matches the spend on your books.

The bottom line

Lufthansa didn't stop selling the fare. It stopped promising what the fare can't deliver. Your company is in the same position. Paying for SAF or climate projects can still be worth doing, but it doesn't make a trip carbon neutral, and since 27 September saying so to customers is against the rules in every EU country. Check your wording this week. Then put the effort into the number that counts: the gross emissions of the trips you actually take.

Where we've been

Last week our team was in Vienna for the GBTA + VDR Europe Conference (2–4 November, Austria Center Vienna), the flagship European event for business travel. If we crossed paths there, thank you. If not, reply to this email and we'll set up a call.

What's new at Travel Code

Did you know Travel Code now calculates CO₂ for the whole trip, not just the flight? Emissions now cover trains, buses, ferries, hotels, car rentals and transfers. The report breaks them down by employee, department and route, and companies can set a climate goal and use their own emission factors. That's the gross figure a sustainability report needs, with no offsets mixed in. (Changelog →)

Sources

• Voyages d'Affaires — Lufthansa recycles its Green Fares into Impact Fares (27 Oct 2026)
• Business Travel Executive — Lufthansa Group renaming Green Fares "Impact Fares" (27 Oct 2026)
• One Mile at a Time — Lufthansa loses greenwashing lawsuit, rebrands Green Fares as Impact Fares (23 Oct 2026)
• Deutsche Umwelthilfe — DUH wins climate lawsuit against Lufthansa (24 Mar 2025, German)
• EUR-Lex — Directive (EU) 2024/825 on empowering consumers for the green transition
• Certivo — Empowering Consumers Directive: EU bans generic green claims from 27 Sept 2026
• European Commission — Sustainable consumption coordinated actions (airline claims)
• EFRAG — ESRS E1 Climate change (delegated act annex)

Travel Code helps corporate travel and finance teams see, control, and reconcile every dollar of trip spend in one platform. travel-code.com · Expense Management · Net-60 Card