Held on 4th February 2020, at Expedia’s office, London.
This week we were part of a timely gathering of travel management companies, airlines, train companies and corporate travel buyers all interested and ready to make changes to reduce emissions in the industry. The agenda put together by Sam Cande of Traveldoo was very well received, developed interesting debate and opened up the floor to many questions.
Flying was certainly on the agenda with one panel dedicated to whether airlines can achieve net zero by 2050. Lufthansa, easyJet and FGA were asked questions, by Clive Wratten of The Business Travel Association, on technology, investment and about the need to fly less?
We discussed that, our work at FGA, also expands to looking into remote working, policy and carbon offsets and that we don’t see that there is just one solution. Sarah, founder of FGA discussed their involvement in a project with The Port at CERN which explores virtual conferencing and these factors further; the project just being shortlisted for a circular economy startup competition through the Impact Hub Zurich. Research being at the core of FGAs work.
It was acknowledged that the aviation industry states: fleet update, more efficient air traffic management and sustainable aviation fuels (SAF) as being the 3 main decarbonisation factors in the short to medium term. We discussed the definition of short term, being at least 5-10 years, and that scale up of SAF/carbon neutral won’t happen overnight due to funding not being there right now, nor the customers. easyJet and Lufthansa stating that SAF is too expensive for them to purchase and that aviation is such a price sensitive sector. This is agreed in the industry which is why we need to increase supply of SAF and encourage demand to bring prices down; as with all new innovations the price starts high and reduces over time. Creative solutions need to be found and much work on finding those initial early adopters is needed.
easyJet discussed that electric planes (eviation) are their go-to decarbonisation solution for 2030 due to their focus on short haul flights.
FGA brought up that there will be conscious customers and an audience willing to pay to fly sustainably in the future. Work has started by many in the industry to build this new customer base including companies such as SkyNRG, KLM, Neste, Fulcrum Bioenergy and Gevo.
FGA are building awareness for the industry and will be part of the line up at the next CACTUS meeting, a group set up for climate action in the corporate traveller group, and will be held at the Microsoft office in London 28th February.
The event happened just as the UK Government releases their 2050 decarbonisation plan for aviation.
There was great turn out this week and big a realisation that there is much to work on in the energy transition in the travel industry. See the event on linkedIn here and here.