Lauren Riley: 'For net-zero to take off, we need a breakthrough in sustainable aviation fuel'
By most industry metrics, United Airlines’s environment strategy is flying high. Since the Chicago-based carrier became the first U.S. airline to publicly become carbon neutral back in 2018, it has racked up an “A-” score from CDP, had its climate plan validated by the Science-Based Targets initiative, and been named as one of Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies. Yet, as United admits, it still has an awfully long way to go. In 2023, its direct emissions stood at 38,138,662 metric tonnes, 20% up on the previous year. While the tail-end of Covid in 2022 helps partly explain this discrepancy, the trajectory and the overall size of the company’s footprint still makes for worrying reading. According to Climate Arc’s new TransitionArc tool, the company is projected to exceed its emissions budget between 2021 and 2035, and needs to decrease its emissions by 4% a year between 2020 and 2025. So how will one of the world’s largest airlines get on track? Answering that question falls to Lauren Riley, United’s chief sustainability officer and managing director of global environmental affairs. Her responses range from operational efficiencies and policy incentives, to new propulsion technologies and fleet renewal. Yet one idea undergirds them all: the role of innovation. Like every company in a hard-to-abate sector, United faces a dilemma: even if it were to deploy every commercially available sustainability solution, it would still fall miles short of its net-zero ambitions. Take the next generation of energy-efficient airplanes, which Riley flags as a “really, really important” driver of emissions reduction in the near term. Under its Next United initiative, the airline has laid out a plan to purchase 800 such aircraft between 2023 and 2032. Total emission reductions anticipated: around 20% (per passenger seat). That’s good, but not good enough, especially if United intends to keep up with the public’s appetite for flying, which is set to increase by 40% globally come the end of the decade.<br/>
https://portal.staralliance.com/cms/news/hot-topics/2024-07-17/star/lauren-riley-for-net-zero-to-take-off-we-need-a-breakthrough-in-sustainable-aviation-fuel
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Lauren Riley: 'For net-zero to take off, we need a breakthrough in sustainable aviation fuel'
By most industry metrics, United Airlines’s environment strategy is flying high. Since the Chicago-based carrier became the first U.S. airline to publicly become carbon neutral back in 2018, it has racked up an “A-” score from CDP, had its climate plan validated by the Science-Based Targets initiative, and been named as one of Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies. Yet, as United admits, it still has an awfully long way to go. In 2023, its direct emissions stood at 38,138,662 metric tonnes, 20% up on the previous year. While the tail-end of Covid in 2022 helps partly explain this discrepancy, the trajectory and the overall size of the company’s footprint still makes for worrying reading. According to Climate Arc’s new TransitionArc tool, the company is projected to exceed its emissions budget between 2021 and 2035, and needs to decrease its emissions by 4% a year between 2020 and 2025. So how will one of the world’s largest airlines get on track? Answering that question falls to Lauren Riley, United’s chief sustainability officer and managing director of global environmental affairs. Her responses range from operational efficiencies and policy incentives, to new propulsion technologies and fleet renewal. Yet one idea undergirds them all: the role of innovation. Like every company in a hard-to-abate sector, United faces a dilemma: even if it were to deploy every commercially available sustainability solution, it would still fall miles short of its net-zero ambitions. Take the next generation of energy-efficient airplanes, which Riley flags as a “really, really important” driver of emissions reduction in the near term. Under its Next United initiative, the airline has laid out a plan to purchase 800 such aircraft between 2023 and 2032. Total emission reductions anticipated: around 20% (per passenger seat). That’s good, but not good enough, especially if United intends to keep up with the public’s appetite for flying, which is set to increase by 40% globally come the end of the decade.<br/>
