More than 50 global companies, including Boston Consulting
Group, Deloitte, Kuehne+Nagel and Novo Nordisk and many from the travel sector
including British Airways and KLM, have signed a pledge to power global aviation
using a minimum of 10 per cent sustainable aviation fuels (SAFs) by 2030.
The companies, members of the World Economic Forum’s (WEF’s)
Clean Skies for Tomorrow Coalition, made the announcement on Wednesday evening at the Sustainable
Development Impact Summit as part of their commitment to achieve net zero.
SAFs are fuels synthesised from sustainable, renewable
feedstocks – such as municipal waste, agricultural residues and waste lipids,
or developed through a power-to-liquid route – and which can be “dropped in” to
existing aviation fuels.
However, difficulties remain in getting SAF to scale up
production due to the prohibitively high price gap with fossil-based jet fuel,
resulting in a “chicken and egg” problem with supply and demand. Transport & Environment's Matteo Mirolo also recently wrote for BTN Europe that not all SAFs are equally good.
The WEF coalition has also developed a Sustainable Aviation Fuel
Certificate (SAFc) system, a new accounting tool that will allow SAF emissions
reductions to be claimed by travellers and cargo customers if they are willing
to cover the higher costs.
“Achieving our ambition will require commitment, innovation
and cross-industry collaboration from a wide range of stakeholders,” said
Lauren Uppink Calderwood, head of aviation, travel and tourism at WEF. “We are
calling on governments, international organisations and others to work with us
to take important steps forward through new policies, targeted investments and
regulations that create a level playing field while incentivising
transformation.”
Dirk-Maarten Molenaar, head of
BCG’s travel and tourism practice for EMEA and South America, said: “Low
carbon air travel is key in helping us achieve our net-zero ambitions and
global climate goals. As it stands, our largest emission source comes from this area,
which makes up over three-quarters of our total carbon footprint.
“Travel is integral to our business
and to serving our clients, so we are taking significant steps to reduce our
impact in this area. We’ve committed to lowering business travel emissions by
48.5 per cent per employee by 2025 and we’ll reach the remaining reductions by
supporting the use of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) for BCG flights.
“As a business we recognise that the responsibility of
decarbonising the aviation industry doesn’t solely fall on airlines – those
that depend on air travel to operate successfully also have a role to play.”