Working under the public relations philosophy that it’s generally a good idea to put yourself in position to get lots of public credit and praise for doing what you’re going to have to do anyway, Delta Airlines on Friday scored big points in the public’s conscience by announcing that it will spend a whopping $1 billion over the next decade to become the first U.S. global airline that will operate in a carbon neutral way.
That is, according to Delta CEO Ed Bastian, his carrier will produce no net increase in the release of carbon dioxide as of March 1. Furthermore, it will do so despite the carrier’s expected aggressive growth – probably 3% or more annually - over the next 10 years. And achieving that goal will require Delta, now in some respects the world’s biggest airline, to spend $1 billion. That’s a seemingly big number even for a company that brought in $47 billion in revenue last year.
LIke most airlines, Delta is adding lots of more fuel efficient planes to reduce costs and C02 ... [+]
Bastian, however, carefully avoided saying it would cost Delta an extra $1 billion. Nor did he provide details on how his airline will offset all that increased flying and all the attendant additional emissions of CO2 over this decade.
That’s because it is possible, maybe even likely that Delta – like other airlines around the world that have the same, mostly as-yet-unannounced goal of holding their carbon emissions neutral across this new decade – will spend $0 extra to achieve carbon neutrality. Delta likely will spend that $1 billion on maintaining carbon neutrality by counting $1 billion or so that it would have to spend in any case as spending on its carbon neutrality program.
Think of it like counting all or most the money you spend on groceries, and all of the money you spend on gym memberships and workout clothing as money spent on your new weight loss program. You were going to buy groceries anyway, and you’ve been paying your gym membership and buying workout clothes for years. But now when you count all they money you were spending already toward your new weight loss program it looks like you’ve made a big, new and substantial investment in losing weight, even when the only changes are perhaps in your level of commitment and how you categorize the money you spend.
Most Americans are aware of the Paris Climate Agreement – from which President Donald Trump withdrew the United States last year – and smaller international agreements aimed at slowing the climatological impact of CO2 and other emissions on Earth’s environment. But few know that such an agreement involving most of the world’s airlines was agreed to in 2016 at a meeting of the International Civil Aviation Organization. That’s an agency of the United Nations. Beginning this year and running through 2023, more than 70 nations, including the United States, voluntarily will report their annual airline CO2 emission totals to ICAO. They also will be taking “voluntary” actions to slow their total CO2 production from aviation (although it’s voluntary only in the sense that if they don’t cut their CO2 emissions growth they have to pay penalties - in the form of carbon offsets).
In 2024 all but a handful of the world’s remaining nations will join in the reporting of that data as the agreement advances to its “mandatory participation” phase. By 2030, all those countries and their airlines are pledged to achieve aviation carbon neutrality vis-à-vis their 2020 emissions. Failure to do so would render most carriers subjects to even more stiff environmental fines, to be paid in forced carbon offsets.
So, give Delta a hand for seizing the opportunity to gain a P.R. victory, of sorts, over its competitors by claiming that it’ll be the first “global” U.S. carrier to reach carbon neutrality. Bastian says that beginning March 1 it will begin operating in a carbon neutral fashion as a way of reaching its goal. What’s not clear is if he means Delta will actually be creating no more carbon emissions in future years than it produces this year, or if Delta merely will be buying carbon offsets to compensate for any increase in CO2 emissions it has in future years. But the best guess is it’ll be taking the latter approach for some number of years into the future.
Thing is, though, that despite Delta’s proclamation last week it won’t be the only carrier to reach carbon neutrality soon. JetBlue in January was the first U.S. carrier to publicly commit to carbon neutrality. It’s just that Delta doesn’t consider JetBlue, which has only a small amount of service beyond the U.S. border, to be a “global carrier.” Thus, it’s just a clever P.R. maneuver - defining the the field of play in a way that favors itself - that gives Delta the ability to claim leadership.
Other domestic or mostly domestic U.S. carriers, from giant Southwest to Allegiant, also could achieve carbon neutrality as soon as or faster than Delta precisely because most or all of their operations are domestic – and thus, shorter – than internationally-focused Delta’s many international flights. Because none of them have made carbon neutrality announcements we assume they’ve not achieved carbon neutral operations yet. But, by the same token, they might already be there and we just don’t know it. And, in any case, Delta won’t be alone as a carbon neutral carrier for very long. The industry is being shoved in that direction however excited or reluctant the various carriers may be about going there.
By their very nature, long international flights emit more CO2 than do shorter domestic flights. Additionally, international flights, which typically operate at the highest altitudes flown by commercial airlines, are believed by many scientists and environmentalists to do more damage per ton of CO2 released into the atmosphere than domestic flights, which typically are flown 5,000 to 10,000 feet lower. That’s based on the hypothesis that CO2 and other toxic emissions cause more net damage to the atmosphere when they’re released into the very thin air at very high altitudes. So it may be much easier - and faster - for strictly or mostly domestic carriers to reach carbon neutrality than it is for long-haul international carriers like Delta.
Plus, there’s nothing to prevent Delta’s two big U.S.-based U.S., United and American - or it’s big international rivals like British Airways, Lufthansa, JAL and others - from moving fast to reach carbon neutrality, too. It’s likely they haven’t yet, or they would have been trumpeting their achievement the way Delta now is trumpeting its own. But under the ICAO rules they’re all already headed in that direction. And now Delta’s public claim of victory in the “race” to achieve carbon neutrality will, at the very least, give them an incentive to say publicly where they are along the road to carbon neutrality. What’s more, based on the huge numbers of new planes they’ve been bringing into their fleets and the existing rules requiring the purchase of carbon offsets to serve many countries, it’s likely that none of those big international carriers are very far behind Delta on that road.
Delta perhaps also should be congratulated for publicly placing a $1 billion earmark for carbon neutrality on its budgets over the next 10 years. But it’s not like it has committed to spending an extra billion dollars it otherwise would have kept in its pocket. Delta merely has counted up all the money it was going to spend anyway on new equipment, resources and processes that also will have some bearing on its carbon emissions. Thus, the hundreds of planes it will acquire over the next 10 yeas will count, to some degree, toward reducing Delta’s CO2 emission even though none of those planes are being bought solely to lower the airline’s carbon footprint.
American, United and even Southwest arguably could spend as much or more than Delta to reach carbon neutrality. And proportionately, smaller carriers could end up having to spend more per plane operated, or per available seat mile offered to consumers. Such comparative calculations literally won’t be possible until, well, 2030.
There are only three viable paths toward carbon neutrality for airlines. And no, switching to electric-powered planes is not one of those viable paths. Battery technology today is likely 50 years or more away from being able to power even a relatively small Boeing 737-sized jetliner on a short domestic route. Even then, the electricity used to charge such enormous batteries would have to come from power generation stations that likely would emit significant amounts of CO2. And the rare earth minerals such as lithium used in making batteries require the heavy use of large excavating and refining machinery that currently produce more CO2 emissions collectively than the use of those batteries in commercial aviation likely would save.
So, the airlines’ three options are:
- Buy new planes that are significantly more efficient in terms of fuel burned per available seat mile flown. Burning less fuel in 2030 to fly the exact route flown today could save a carrier 15% to 30% in the amount of fuel burned and, as a result, in the amount of CO2 emitted (not to mention similar percentage savings on the purchase of fuel)
- Buy alternative fuels that have much lower CO2 emission characteristics on a per available seat mile basis
- Buy carbon offsets – which almost exclusively means investing millions of dollars in the planting of trees so that over the lifetime of the billions of trees planted through such programs those trees will scrub as much or more CO2 from the air as the airlines’ planes would emit during their entire useful service lives
None of those are cheap options.
The first will take lots of time and advance planning, and depends on continued growth in demand for air travel. That’s not something those environmental activists now promoting the idea of “Flygskam” (“Flight Shaming” in Swedish) as a way of reducing travel demand, probably want to see happen.
The second option will require enormous technical advancements, huge financial investments by third parties, and complex regulatory action on a global scale.
And the third would continue and deepen airlines’ – and their customers’ - involvement with reforestation and other environmental “repair” schemes that increasingly are being called out for sketchy financial and ethical practices and dubious effectiveness.
The most direct way that airlines have of reducing their CO2 outputs is by buying the most modern planes and retiring older, less efficient models. But commercial jetliners are 20-year assets with price tags ranging from $100 million to $500 million per plane. Big international range jets, which because of the very long routes they serve, produce the most CO2, cost over $200 million on average. Even the wealthiest of airlines can afford to add only a dozen or two such planes a year. And while it may reduce their operating costs and CO2 emissions to get rid of older jets, unless those planes go directly to the bone yard they will continue flying, either for the growing airline itself, or for other airlines around the world that pick them up on the used market. Thus many of those old, less environmentally friendly planes will continue to belch out lots more CO2 for some number of additional years after being replaced by new planes. Unless big airlines like Delta are willing to swallow the high cost of fully retiring jets that have lots of service life left in them - something their shareholders most certainly would not appreciate - shifting to new planes is a relatively slow way to achieve net global reductions, or even neutrality in CO2 emissions.
Alternative fuels, typically made from non-carbon sources like animal and plant fats, are a popular alternative - at least in the minds of those not knowledgeable about either technical aircraft operations or the relationship between the atmosphere’s composition and Earth’s vegetation.
But those who understand how sensitive jet engines are – and the critical pathways that fuels must follow to reach those engines in flight – are keenly aware that despite all the talk, few such fuels can be simply swapped in for the kerosene-like fuel called Jet-A that airlines use. Nearly all alternative fuels lack certain qualities needed for jet engines to create adequate power and thrust. So they must be mixed with Jet-A to meet engines’ operating requirements. Ideally the mix would be a 50/50 blend of alternative fuel and Jet-A.
But like the planes and the engines themselves, such blends of fuel must be certified for use by regulatory authorities like the Federal Aviation Administration in this country. That also means that plane and engine makers must be brought into the long and complex testing and certification process with each airline seeking to use those blended alternative fuels. It’s a daunting process, even before the industry begins to tackle the big infrastructure issues like where will such fuels be refined and blended in large quantities, how will they be transported and stored at various airports around the world, and how can they be kept separate from conventional Jet-A fuel in airports’ storage and pumping systems?
Beyond that, there are significant issues to be dealt with related to the acquisition of feed stocks for alternative fuels. Using palm oil, currently a popular feed stock, is believed by many to be a significant factor in deforestation. Algae, which once looked promising, is just too hard and too expensive to grow in the quantities required. Wild grasses, wood chips, animal waste, and the carcasses of animals killed for their meat in slaughterhouses all are viable sources of feed stock. But the fuel produced from those feed stocks all costs significantly more than Jet-A costs today. And that’s before the logistics and costs associated with moving such materials around the world to wherever they can be processed are added into the equation.
And, finally, the purchase of carbon offsets is at least as costly, if not more so than the cost of the other solutions. And it plunges airlines and their passengers into an ethically and environmentally challenged world. Not only are they, in effect, paying “indulgences” for the sin of traveling, there’s increasing evidence that many carbon offset programs are partial or full-on scams, and that even when operated honestly are shockingly ineffective.
Foreign airlines, especially those who operate extensively or entirely in Europe, already spend millions of dollars annually on offsets that are little more than schemes to make carriers pay to plant trees, mostly in third-world areas beset by man-caused deforestation – not deforestation directly resulting from CO2 and other toxic emissions. And now that U.S. carriers are paticipating in the U.N. carbon neutrality plane, called CORSIA, they too will be subject to the requirement to buy carbon offsets for any additional CO2 emissions above 2020 levels that they can’t elminate by other means.
But buying carbon offsets increasingly appears to be an ethically questionable, financially ill-advise and scientifically ineffective method of CO2 emissions control. First, the math used to calculate how many trees it takes to offset the carbon produced by commercial flights is, to be kind, uncertain. Charges of legalized piracy are frequently leveled at governments that require carriers to make such payments. But such allegations are not as frequent as complaints (both from airlines and from the environmental lobby itself) that companies or even governments that receive such offset payments fail to plant anything close to the number of trees promised.
More recently, scientists and environmentalists have begun challenging basic assumptions about the efficacy of even the best carbon offset schemes. The problem: it takes years for freshly planted saplings to become big enough to scrub the amount of CO2 from the atmosphere that they’re intended to scrub. As a result, the critics fret that the negative effects of CO2 emissions today continue for years unabated before trees planted to offset those emissions can do their job, creating a kind of negative compounding effect in atmospheric CO2 impacts. In short, CO2 offset programs appear to be perpetually falling farther and farther behind the curve of the build-up of CO2 in Earth’s atmosphere.
So, kudos to Delta for its P.R. win. But nothing else of much importance has been achieved - yet.
