Friendly, clean skies
United Airlines invests in carbon-capture technology
United Airlines is investing in a venture that doesn’t make airplanes, transport passengers or ring up frequent flier miles on the company’s credit cards. And, even as it posts losses stemming from the coronavirus pandemic, United is providing millions of dollars to that venture, which has no direct ties to aviation and may not make any money.
It is backing carbon capture — the nascent technology designed to suck carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
United Airlines is the first major U.S. air carrier to take a step toward trying to remove some of the greenhouse gases spewed by it and every other airline, pollution that is driving up global temperatures.
For United, it’s an alluring project. Governments, particularly in Europe, are beginning to crack down on emissions from airlines. Last month, the Environmental Protection Agency for the first time regulated greenhouse gas emissions from commercial aircraft, although environmental groups say the rules are so lax as to not make a difference. United is increasingly focused on its voluntary goal of netzero emissions by 2050 — good publicity at a time of growing alarm about climate change.
But it may also be placing an early bet that carbon capture technology could — with the help of federal tax credits — prove profitable as the globe races for ways to cut the pollution that threatens the planet.
“This crisis will end,” United chief executive Scott Kirby wrote on Medium last month, referring to the pandemic. “That’s why we’re keeping our focus on another crisis that will force all of us to change our behavior in far more dramatic ways than the pandemic ever did: the crisis of a changing climate. The longer we wait, the more drastic those changes will have to be.”
United has declined to say how much it is investing.
Steve Oldham, chief executive of Carbon Engineering, which has developed carbon capture technology, said United is taking an unusual approach to decarbonization. “When most are thinking they have to stop emissions, here you have a very credi
ble company with a real need saying that the best way of dealing with emissions is removing them,” he said.
A lot is at stake. If global airlines were lumped together as one country, they would rank among the world’s top five or six emitters of carbon dioxide, according to the International Energy Agency. Aviation accounts for 3.5% of the planet’s man-made greenhouse gas emissions, a recent Manchester Metropolitan University study says. At high altitudes, the planes leave behind contrails of carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxide, water vapor and soot.
When it comes to commercial aviation, there are no low-carbon alternatives. In the summer, a small white-and-red allelectric-powered Cessna e-Caravan flew safely in the air over Washington state — for only 28 minutes. The plane had room for nine, but only the pilot was on board.
Solar-powered flights are even less practical. A plane called Solar Impulse 2 went around the world over 14 months, but it could only hold the pilot in an unheated, unpressurized phone-boothsize cockpit whose single seat doubled as a toilet. The plane flew at an average of 30 miles per hour to maximize energy savings, and, despite an enormous wing span, it was only able to carry the equivalent weight of one automobile.