The environmental impact of Taylor Swift’s private jet travels has suddenly come under scrutiny. The billionaire pop superstar has a concert booked in Tokyo on February 10, the eve of Super Bowl LVIII and the night of the Maxim Casino Royale Experience featuring 21 Savage and 50 Cent in Las Vegas.
According to the Washington Post, many are assuming that Swift will fly one of her private jets—she owns a Dassault Falcon 900 and a Dassault Falcon 7X, each worth approximately $25 million—from Tokyo to Las Vegas to watch her boyfriend, Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, play against the San Francisco 49ers in the NFL’s ultimate championship game on February 11.
Swift had already come under fire after it was reported that she flew privately to the Chiefs’ AFC championship game against the Baltimore Ravens—Fox News posted on X that her jet was “belching tons of CO2 emissions,” which led to more online scrutiny.
Citing a 2023 paper from University College London, the Post reports that private jet trips are among the most carbon-intensive travel mediums, with one private jet trip generating nine times as much carbon per passenger as flying commercial. Activist Greta Thunberg and the group Extinction Rebellion have called for an outright ban on private jet travel, while others, like Bill Gates, recommend that private jet flyers purchase carbon offset credits.
Swift’s team claims that she buys carbon offsets to negate the emissions produced by her jet travel, although the amount, type and quality of those offsets wasn’t specified.
If she did fly a private 14,000-mile trip on her Dassault Falcon 900 jet from Tokyo to Las Vegas and then to Melbourne to perform on February 16, the Washington Post estimates that she’d burn 8,800 gallons fuel and create about 90 tons of carbon emissions, more than all the carbon emissions six average Americans would produce in a year.
Of course, concerns over Swift’s private jet jaunts have been wholly overshadowed by her record-setting showing at the the 66th annual Grammy Awards. With her 2022 LP Midnights winning Album of the Year, the “Anti-Hero” singer became the first artist to receive the Grammys’ top honor four times.
Amid her celebratory speech, Swift took the opportunity to announce her latest album, The Tortured Poets Department.
“I want to say thank you to the fans by telling you a secret that I’ve been keeping from you for the past two years, which is that my brand-new album comes out April 19,” Swift said before posting album art to X.
We’ll see if Swift can notch Album of the Year win No. 5 in 2025.