A €2 Carbon Charge on Departing Flights Has Yielded €266 Million Since Portugal Introduced It in 2021
Portugal's €2-per-passenger carbon tax on air travel has raised about €266.6 million since it began in 2021, with roughly €258.6 million channelled to the Environmental Fund, ECO reported. The first half of 2026 brought in €31.5 million, up 2.9% on a year earlier.
A small line on every airline ticket out of mainland Portugal has quietly grown into a quarter-billion-euro stream of green finance. The country's carbon tax on air travel (taxa de carbono sobre as viagens aéreas) has raised about €266.6 million since it took effect in 2021, according to figures reported by the business daily ECO on 17 August, with the overwhelming share channelled to the state's Environmental Fund.
The charge is easy to miss: a flat €2 added to the price of every departing passenger's ticket on commercial flights, collected by the airlines at the moment of sale and passed to the National Civil Aviation Authority (ANAC, Autoridade Nacional da Aviação Civil). ANAC in turn transfers the proceeds to the Environmental Fund (Fundo Ambiental), the government pot earmarked for cutting transport emissions and financing the energy transition. Of the €266.6 million collected so far, roughly €258.6 million has already been handed over to the fund, ECO reported.
The tax was created by the 2021 State Budget law (Lei n.º 75-B/2020, of 31 December) and began generating revenue in the second half of that year. From July 2023 it was extended to smaller aircraft of up to 19 seats, charged under a formula tied to capacity and distance rather than the flat per-passenger rate. Several categories are exempt, according to ANAC: children under two, flights to and from the Azores and Madeira, public-service-obligation routes serving less-connected regions, and emergency or technical landings.
The receipts have climbed steadily as post-pandemic air traffic recovered. The tax brought in about €58.7 million across 2024 and roughly €64.4 million in 2025 — an increase of around 10 percent — according to figures published earlier this year by Jornal de Negócios. The pace has cooled somewhat in 2026: the first six months yielded €31.48 million, up 2.9 percent on the €30.6 million collected in the same period of 2025, ECO reported, with almost all of it (€30.5 million) already transferred to the Environmental Fund.
The monthly pattern tracks the tourism calendar closely. Revenue bottoms out in the depths of winter — around €3.9 million in January — and swells with the summer rush, peaking near €7 million in May and about €6.6 million in June, as departures from Lisbon, Porto and Faro fill up. With Humberto Delgado Airport in Lisbon among Europe's most congested and passenger numbers at record levels, the €2-per-head levy compounds into real money precisely when Portuguese airports are busiest.
For travellers, the charge is modest enough to vanish inside a fare; for the state, it has become a dependable, low-visibility source of climate funding that has now cleared a cumulative €266 million in five years. Whether that money moves fast enough to matter — the Environmental Fund has faced recurring criticism over how quickly it disburses what it takes in — is a separate question. On the evidence of the latest figures, at least, the flow into the fund shows no sign of drying up: even a slower 2026 is on course to add well over €60 million by year-end. For anyone putting a camera in Portuguese airspace, our 2026 guide to flying a drone in Portugal: the ANAC operator number, the free A1/A3 exam, the compulsory insurance that starts at 900 grams, and the aerial-survey permission every camera drone needs from the AAN sets the latest reference. On what ANA now wants to charge per passenger at each of the three, our report on ANA's 2027 tariff proposal, which would lift the regulated charge 0.67 percent at Lisbon and about 3.8 percent at Porto and Faro, and on the concession annex that explains why the three numbers differ sets the latest reference.
