Airlines navigate meeting climate change pledges

As politicians and business leaders sharpen their focus on climate change, the airline industry is accelerating its progress on becoming more climate-friendly. Flights have a huge carbon footprint: on a return trip between London and New York, for example, CO2 emissions for each business-class passenger will be more than 1.2 tonnes, according to ICAO calculations. As the sector takes on the huge task of decarbonisation, airlines are seeking advice from lawyers on how to approach it. “This may turn out to be . . . a quantum leap for the entire industry,” says Kevin Lewis, co-head of law firm Sidley Austin’s aviation and airlines practice. It has advised United Airlines and American Airlines, among other aviation companies, on their sustainability goals. He points out that airlines are developing new technologies and materials, “both for the vehicle itself and everything that goes in it, and the fuel and the infrastructure to create it”. In October, before the COP26 UN climate change conference, leading airlines pledged to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050 — an ambitious target for a polluting industry whose revenues have plummeted during the pandemic. Aviation accounts for about 2% of human-induced carbon emissions globally and 12 per cent of emissions from transport, says the Air Transport Action Group, an industry non-profit group focused on sustainability. “The whole industry is committed to completely transforming itself from consuming all that energy in a way that puts out a lot of carbon on a defined timeline, to an industry that does it in a carbon-neutral way,” Lewis says. Story has more. <br/>