Sustainable Aviation: Ready for Take-Off

Welcome to The Sustainable Aviation One newsletter!

I’ve been passionate about the environment since I was a teenager. That’s when I first got fired up by the big issues of the day – the hole in the ozone layer, tropical forests, and the first rumblings of something called “global warming”. I was pretty right on, so I was always writing to my MP about something or organising recycling campaigns at school (much to the bemusement of my friends….). That passion’s guided my career ever since, in NGOs, consultancy, political campaigning and, for the last fifteen years, leading the sustainability and carbon teams at Heathrow Airport.?

I’m also a passionate believer in what international travel brings us. When I was eight, my family moved to Hong Kong for a year. I grew up in small-town southern England and can still vividly remember arriving somewhere completely different: the sounds, heat, language, culture, and food. Since then, I’ve been lucky enough to work, study and travel in different parts of the world, most of those journeys enabled by jet planes. The human value of safe, affordable, and quick air travel is immense. It enables some of the most positive things we do together as people globally: connecting, exploring, cooperating, and trading.

That’s why I describe my work as Carbon Strategy Director at Heathrow and my role as Chair of Sustainable Aviation – the UK industry’s sustainability coalition, as my dream job. It sounds corny, I know, but it’s true. I want my 14-year-old daughter and my 11-year-old son to be able to enjoy what air travel has given me and my generation. And I want them to inherit a world that’s still worth travelling. The only way we’re going to achieve that is by taking the carbon out of flying.

This is “mission possible”. We have the tools, and the net zero transition for aviation is starting to happen. Our challenge now is to deliver, at scale and speed. To do this, we know that we need to collaborate and share ideas to tackle the climate crisis. For aviation, that means collaboration:

• through the aviation value chain –aerospace manufacturers, airlines, airports, fuel companies and air navigation providers
• with the people throughout our businesses who are full of ideas about how we can improve
• with the governments who ultimately are the only ones able to send the market signals needed to drive real scale and speed
• with the academics innovating and developing the whole systems models to help guide us
• with the investors with the funds to back new net zero technology
• with the companies taking a lead in other sectors?
• with the campaigners who will rightly scrutinise us and hold our feet to the fire?

That is why I wanted to create an outlet to share my thoughts on aviation’s journey to net zero sustainability and to help spark conversations and ideas. So, I’ve decided to share a bi-monthly newsletter, The Sustainable Aviation One, that will look at some of the critical issues and questions for sustainable aviation and sustainability more broadly.

I am very excited to share this first edition with you. I will give my high-level view on how aviation is decarbonising, alongside a look into the Sustainable Aviation Road-Map. In successive editions of the newsletter, you can expect a deeper dive format into industry-specific topics. I’ve set out a few of those at the end and very much welcome feedback on issues or debates you’d like my take on in upcoming newsletters.?

Aviation’s global commitment to net zero

Climate is an existential threat to us all. The latest IPCC report set out dire warnings of what will happen if we don’t limit temperature rises to 1.5 degrees. It emphasised the need for us all to act fast, because, right now, we’re not doing enough.

Like every sector, aviation must get to net zero by 2050. In early 2020, the UK became the first national aviation sector anywhere in the world to make a net zero commitment and publish a detailed plan to get there. In the three years since the whole global aviation sector and the world’s governments have backed that same goal.

So, aviation around the world is aiming at the same destination. The many roadmaps that governments and businesses have now produced are very consistent on the route we need to take to get there. There’s also growing confidence in those roadmaps as some of the technologies we require to start are being produced and scaled.?

But how will aviation decarbonise?

As Chair of Sustainable Aviation, I had the privilege to launch the latest Net Zero Carbon Road-Map at the Sustainable Skies World Summit in April. The Road-Map sets out how UK aviation can meet its 2050 commitment.

The Road-Map shows the three measures in the aviation sector that can get us three-quarters of the way to net zero:

• The first 25% of the journey will come from using more efficient aircraft and modernising airspace – both known solutions. It’s always going to make sense to use less fuel.
• 10% will come from changing planes to zero emissions hydrogen planes on shorter routes – earlier this year saw the first UK flight of a 20-seat ZeroAvia plane powered by hydrogen.
• The biggest single contribution - 40% of the overall journey - will come from changing fuel to lower carbon Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF). This is proven and has powered nearly half a million commercial flights globally.

The remaining quarter or so of the journey will be achieved by removing any carbon from the atmosphere we’re still producing and from slightly lower demand growth resulting from some of these net zero technologies having a “green premium” before the market scales up and costs fall

Partnership with government

The Road-Map also underlined that this isn’t just a decarbonisation opportunity, it’s an economic one too. The UK can be the home of green aviation, creating tens of thousands of jobs and billions in investment. But other countries are moving faster in the race to corner the market for these new technologies, so this opportunity for the UK is at risk without urgent Government action.

The eighth meeting of the Jet Zero Council was held alongside the Summit. Chaired by the Secretaries of State for Transport and Energy Security & Net Zero, the Council brings together around forty leaders from industry, academia, and NGOs to drive progress.

I set out to the Council, where we want to continue to work with the Government to introduce the policies needed to attract investment. I highlighted in particular the opportunity to deliver commercial UK SAF production by providing an industry-funded price stability mechanism alongside a SAF mandate. I also stressed the importance of the Government’s energy strategy taking account of aviation’s growing needs for zero-carbon electricity in future, with sustainable fuels, hydrogen and carbon capture all requiring green electricity.?

What's happening now

Since the Sustainable Skies Summit, debate about the decarbonisation of our sector and the associated costs has continued.

At a major Boeing-hosted conference in Seattle in mid-May, the company’s Chief Executive expressed doubt that SAF would ever reach complete price parity with conventional jet fuel. Some studies do show a continuing price premium. However, all show too that as production increases, SAF will move down the cost curve as scale economies and learning effects kick in, a conclusion also supported by the analysis done for the Sustainable Aviation Roadmap. SAF will play a crucial role in our journey toward decarbonizing aviation.

Progress scaling up SAF has continued in recent months around the world, particularly in Asia-Pacific:

• Australia has set up a Jet Zero Council-style group and is set to host their first meeting later this month, with the group aiming to support SAF production in the country
• Malaysian Aviation Group has signed a SAF agreement with the first deliveries expected from 2027
• India has announced plans for a 1% SAF mandate by 2025 for domestic airlines
• Construction of the world's largest SAF plant, run by Neste, has recently completed in Singapore
• China National Aviation Fuel Group and Airbus have signed a memorandum recognising the importance of scaling SAF
• Japan is in the initial stages of creating a form of SAF mandate which is set to require 10% SAF supply for domestic routes by 2030

Last week, France introduced a ban on domestic flights with alternative train journeys of less than 2.5 hours. The ruling aims to reduce CO2 emissions caused by aviation and will affect connections from three regional cities – Lyon, Bordeaux and Nantes to Paris’s second airport at Orly. Flights from those cities to connect to Paris’s main airport and France’s hub at Charles de Gaulle can continue. I’ll return to this topic in a future post and how we can take the carbon out of domestic flights in the UK so that we can maintain the vital role that air connectivity plays.?

Engaging Cambridge University's brightest minds

I recently attended a roundtable at the Whittle Lab, Cambridge University, where senior government officials and industry leaders convened to learn the findings of a transatlantic US-UK workshop held in April. The workshop included voices within Cambridge University, MIT and the University of California, alongside government officials and chief scientists. It identified four opportunities to speed up aviation’s decarbonisation: developing common tools and models to help inform choices, targeting more ambitious efficiency improvement by the mid-2030s, avoiding contrails and using SAF that delivers the best overall lifecycle savings.

The “Aviation Impact Accelerator” at the Whittle Lab has developed a “whole-system” model to assess different scenarios for the aviation transition in areas such as the energy inputs required and feedstock availability for SAF. The model allows us to quickly test different scenarios – an ability we need to grow within the industry. As part of the event, King Charles III “broke ground” on a new ￡58m extension designed to be a centre for disruptive innovation in aviation. The centre learns from Formula 1 and looks to halve the time from the current 6 – 8 years it takes for innovations to translate from research to implementation.

What’s next?

It’s encouraging to see the progress we have made as an industry. The sense of momentum in the last two to three years is palpably different. Our challenge now is to maintain that momentum and to deliver, at scale and speed. I urge everyone involved in decarbonising aviation – within the industry, governments, and academia – to consider how they can contribute.

Lastly, I’d like to thank all the readers of my first newsletter! Some of the topics I’m planning a deeper dive into for future editions include:

• The availability of sustainable feedstock for SAF – in the UK and globally
• How corporates can send a demand signal and scale SAF by committing to buy it for their travel needs
• The respective roles and costs of SAF and hydrogen
• Contrails
• The role of carbon pricing and demand management in aviation

Please let me know any thoughts or ideas you have for content to include in The Sustainable Aviation One. To make sure you’re in the loop for future releases, please subscribe to this newsletter, and I look forward to seeing you all for the July edition!