Airlines set lofty plans for net-zero future
The aviation industry can be a lightning rod for criticism from those who blast its contributions to greenhouse gases and climate change.
But in recent months, domestic airlines big and small, passenger and cargo, have announced measures that could muzzle some of the rumblings: a goal to reduce their respective companies’ carbon emissions to net-zero within 30 years.
It’s an ambitious goal, although many airlines have had climate targets for years. Still, the coronavirus pandemic era has acted as a catalyst for many airlines to do more to mitigate an altered climate.
“We know the climate change challenge our country and the world face has only continued to intensify,” Nicholas Calio, president and CEO of Airlines for America, an industry advocacy group, said in a statement. “Today, we embrace the need to take even bolder, more significant steps to address this challenge.”
Airlines are responsible for 3½ percent of all contributions to climate change, according to a study in the journal Atmospheric Environment, while the transportation sector is the largest emitter of greenhouse gases. But while some airlines have expressed goals of bringing their number to zero, reaching the target will be more challenging.
The rub, said Lauren Riley, managing director of environmental affairs and sustainability for United Airlines, is that airlines don’t have a readily available solution. Road vehicles can more easily be converted to electric, but the path to zero is more of a chooseyour-adventure story for airlines.
“It’s a little bit of a nascent space when you look at the technologies that we’re going to need to really support true decarbonized flying,” Riley said.
As other sectors are able to lower their emissions more quickly, aviation’s chunk of the world’s carbon dioxide pie will get larger.
For years, airlines have focused on carbon-offset programs, such as contributing to projects that plant or preserve carbon dioxideabsorbing trees. Some airlines, such as Delta and JetBlue, are still relying, at least in part, on voluntary use of carbon offsets in the near term.
While such moves bring environmental benefits, it’s not enough to get to netzero. And it doesn’t shift behaviors or decisions within the airline because it’s more of a financial transaction conducted outside an airline’s supply chain or operations. Getting to zero, Riley said, will take investing in possible solutions.
“The conversation needs to be about how we can fly the skies sustainably,” she said. “We should all be responsible agents in providing and connecting our customers to their destination in a manner that doesn’t necessarily cause climate change.”
Those customers, Riley said, have increasingly put pressure on airlines to do more to diminish carriers’ effects on a warming planet.
Amelia DeLuca, managing director of sustainability at Delta, echoed that sentiment, saying stakeholders range from investors to businesses looking to reduce their own footprints. It also includes customers, she said, many of whom are vocal about what they view as the airline’s duty to reduce emissions.
“That next generation of customers are saying, ‘Look, I want to travel on a sustainable airline,’” DeLuca said.
Options for airlines to lower their emissions — some of which are more readily available than others — include retiring gasguzzling older aircraft, updating air traffic routes to be more fuel efficient and investing in newer technologies such as electric and hydrogen.
One promising method is boosting access and use of more sustainable fuels.
Fuel powered by plant and municipal waste could help lower carbon dioxide emissions up to 80 percent when compared with conventional jet fuel, according to Aviation Benefits Beyond Borders. But ramping up to widespread usage will take years for a slow-moving and expensive process that has few producers.
In 2019, airlines used 13 million gallons of sustainable aviation fuels — a fraction of the 18 billion gallons of jet fuel gobbled up during that time.
“The airlines have very solid plans to meet those goals,” said Alan Stolzer, dean of the College of Aviation at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Fla. “I’ve heard some companies say 2030, which may be ambitious, but I would say 2050 is definitely feasible.”
Airlines for America members — including Alaska, American, Atlas, Delta, FedEx, Hawaiian, JetBlue,
Southwest, United and UPS — have called upon the federal government to support laws and policies that would help advance the cause. They argue such a transition would create new jobs while boosting the nation’s energy independence. And because sustainable fuels are made of waste, it would lessen the burden on landfills.
While the most unifying goal among airlines is getting to net-zero emissions, various airlines have also sought to work toward other sustainability targets.
United announced in December a multimilliondollar investment in a project to remove carbon dioxide from the air through technology called “direct air capture.” A direct air capture plant, according to United, would sequester 1 million tons of carbon dioxide annually — the rough equivalent to 40 million trees.
Delta announced that it would invest in carbon capture and other green technologies such as electric. Alaska announced a five-year goal to reduce waste through more sustainable packaging, in-flight recycling and offsetting its operational water use through investments in habitat projects.