The Green Agreements Guidance, published by the Competition and Markets Authority, gives general advice on how businesses can collaborate on sustainability goals.
The CMA said it was keen to ensure “that competition law does not impede legitimate collaboration between businesses that is necessary for the promotion or protection of environmental sustainability”.
The guidance gives only one reference to travel, detailing how airlines could avoid penalties for cooperation for the good of the environment.
“An example would be where two airlines cooperate to achieve a particular sustainability benefit on a certain airline route and this leads to higher prices for UK airline passengers," it said.
“In this example, for those consumers who travel both on the airline route on which the cooperation takes place and on connecting routes, it would potentially be appropriate to take into account benefits to those consumers that accrue on both sets of routes on the basis that there is a substantial overlap in the consumers flying on those routes.”
The CMA added it would consider businesses pooling efforts “to reduce duplication of activities”.
“This may be the case for standard-setting, for example where development of a sustainability label applied to certain qualifying products by a number of businesses across a market may reduce confusion for end consumers,” it said.
