Watch: Creating a Future for Sustainable Aviation with Avelia
Shell Aviation President Jan Toschka and Lauren Uppink, Head of Aviation, Travel and Tourism for the World Economic Forum, discuss Avelia, a new platform aimed at helping to jumpstart the SAF market.
Read the transcript
Read the transcript
Title: Creating a Future for Sustainable Aviation with Avelia
Duration: 4:24
Description:
A conversation between Jan Toschka, Former President of Shell Aviation, and Lauren Uppink, Head of Aviation, Travel and Tourism for the World Economic Forum, on how Avelia can enable sustainable aviation.
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On the eve of IATA’s 78th annual meeting, leaders from Shell Aviation and the World Economic Forum sat down to discuss solutions for scaling sustainable aviation.
{Jan Toschka sits on the left side of the screen, Lauren Uppink sits on the right side of the screen. The camera alternates between speakers.}
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Lauren Uppink
Head of Aviation, Travel and Tourism
World Economic Forum
Lauren Uppink:
I think sustainable aviation is absolutely possible, and I think there's growing consensus that there is. But what we do know is that if we want to achieve that, especially if we want to achieve net zero by 2050, we have to act now. And yes, sustainable aviation fuel is just, at the moment, too expensive for it to be used at scale. And so, we have to solve for the chicken and egg challenge where there's not enough demand, and therefore not enough supply, because the investment just isn't going into it.
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Jan Toschka
President
Shell Aviation
Jan Toschka:
It’s indeed, as you say, it's a chicken and egg situation right now. It is mainly because of cost where we don't see so much demand. A number of other uncertainties we need to deal with, but looking at the bigger picture, the 300-400 million tonnes of jet fuel – that's a lot of fuel, which needs to be replaced and decarbonized.
Various numbers are reported: I think it's an investment needed well above a trillion dollars, which clearly indicates how big the challenge is. If the players of the ecosystem all come together, there are ways of overcoming the challenge.
Lauren Uppink:
When we started Clean Skies for Tomorrow, which Shell is a founding partner of, what we realized was that no one wanted to take that one risk and the cost burden on alone. And the funding is there, investors are ready, but they want certainty.
Jan Toschka:
Yeah, Lauren, I couldn't agree more with you. As we said, the task, the challenge is big, and therefore, we need to unlock funding. So, if you look at, obviously, at the airlines, that's one partner in this. But on the other hand, the travellers – the corporate travellers in particular – and this is where a lot of willingness, combined with potential of funding, buying power sits. If we do operate a safe platform and mechanism so that we can bring in the corporate flyers and fund for stuff, I think there was a big chance of boosting demand in the next couple of years to come.
For that, in particular, we worked with our partners Accenture and American Express GBT, and we just launched Avelia. That is a blockchain-based platform allowing corporate flyers to get access to SAF, to buy SAF and get environmental attributes. And I think it's also important to understand that Avelia is not coming in any kind of competition to existing programs. Avelia is complementary to whatever existing program is already there from the various airlines, for instance.
Lauren Uppink:
Seeing corporates being willing, not only to make their own purchases, but find and participate in programs like Avelia and others, is a really good step in the right direction. The important point is that they want to be able to account for and demonstrate that they've made that commitment and that they've made that purchase and shave the cost burden. And so, it is crucial to have traceability and accountability and legitimacy from an environmental perspective.
Jan Toschka:
The number of corporates having announced their target to become net zero by 2050 is growing. Thousands of corporates. So, there is no lack of understanding and willingness to do it. It just needs to function in a way that you get something, as you say, traceability, auditability, all of this needs to be very legitimate. And therefore, we believe in book-and-claim. We believe Avelia will make a difference.
Lauren Uppink:
I couldn't agree more. We have to treat it with a book-and-claim type model to be able to really see take up. We're looking to provide the accounting principles that might help us scale these types of programs even further and give certainty, in this case, to the corporate traveller.
Though the work has been done to find a solution to this challenge, getting it right is going to take everyone's commitment and investment of time and energy and resource. And so, we have an opportunity here. We know we need to act now, as you said, but we need all hands on deck. And aviation brings with it so many benefits, not just to corporate travel, but to fostering tolerance and peace and tourism and economic growth. And we need to make sure that many who benefit from that are also taking responsibility for sharing the price premium.
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The Avelia logo appears centered on a white background, then shrinks and moves to the top of the white background.
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Powered by
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The Shell pecten logo appears on the left and the Accenture logo appears on the right.
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With support from
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Together with
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The American Express Global Business Travel logo appears.
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Discover more at: www.aveliasolutions.com
Key takeaways
Currently, sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) is more expensive than conventional aviation fuel because new production technologies and facilities must be developed to bring it to market.
Avelia aims to help to jumpstart the SAF market by enabling business travellers and airlines to share the cost of SAF while getting credit for the associated carbon reductions.
As customers, investors, and other stakeholders increasingly demand that airlines take meaningful action toward net-zero, industry leaders face a daunting challenge: How they can continue to fly but emit less.
On the eve of IATA’s 78th annual meeting in Doha, Qatar, Jan Toschka, President of Shell Aviation, sat down with Lauren Uppink, Head of Aviation, Travel and Tourism for the World Economic Forum, to discuss solutions for aviation’s sustainable future.
In its first year, Avelia will enable the tracking of up to 1 million gallons of SAF delivered into the aviation fuel network by Shell to demonstrate the concept of the book-and-claim programme.
“I think sustainable aviation is absolutely possible,” said Lauren Uppink, Head of Aviation, Travel and Tourism for the World Economic Forum. “But what we do know is that if we want to achieve that – especially if you want to achieve net-zero by 2050 – we have to act now.”
The aviation industry, considered a hard-to-abate sector, must deploy all available measures to achieve net-zero emissions.
With technologies like battery electric and hydrogen-powered planes still in the early phases of development, sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) is the most viable solution to reduce carbon emissions today for aviation. SAF can be made from sustainable sources such as used cooking oil and agricultural waste and, in its neat form, has the potential to reduce lifecycle emissions by up to 80 per cent compared with conventional aviation fuel.
“It is mainly because of the cost that we don't see so much demand,” said Jan Toschka, President of Shell Aviation. “I think it's an investment needed well above a trillion dollars, which clearly indicates how big the challenge is.”
SAF is more expensive than conventional aviation fuel because new production technologies and facilities must be developed to bring it to market.
A collaborative approach to solving SAF’s supply and demand challenge
Through the World Economic Forum’s Clean Skies for Tomorrow Coalition, Uppink said it became clear that while the funding needed to scale SAF exists, investors want more certainty.
“When we started Clean Skies for Tomorrow, of which Shell is a founding partner, what we realised was that no one wanted to take that one risk and the cost burden on alone,” said Uppink. Toschka noted that thousands of corporations have already implemented their own science-based targets in line with reaching net-zero, demonstrating their commitment to sustainability.
Most corporations have focused their sustainability efforts on reducing emissions under their direct ownership or operational control, known as scope 1 and 2 emissions. This means indirect emissions from things like business travel are often not the priority.
Scope 3 emissions can be difficult to quantify because they fall outside of the company’s direct control or ownership. This lack of direct control makes collecting high-quality data increasingly complicated and creates barriers to reducing these emissions.
Despite these challenges, there is enormous potential for corporations to reduce scope 3 emissions to mitigate the worst impacts of climate change. That is why Shell, Accenture, and American Express Global Business Travel (Amex GBT) partnered to create Avelia, a new platform aimed at helping to jumpstart the SAF market by enabling business travellers and airlines to share the cost of SAF while getting credit for the associated carbon reductions.
Lauren Uppink, Head of Aviation, Travel and Tourism for the World Economic Forum“The work has been done to find a solution to this challenge, but getting it right is going to take everyone's commitment and investment of time, energy, and resource.”
Avelia’s scalable co-investment model allows companies to jointly fund the cost of SAF, which provides the necessary demand signals to producers, and thus is a crucial step to increasing SAF supply. An industry-accepted carbon accounting mechanism, like book-and-claim, is key for such programmes to credibly grow.
“They want to be able to account for and demonstrate that they've made that commitment,” said Uppink. “It is crucial to have traceability, accountability, and legitimacy from an environmental perspective.”
Avelia aims to build the credibility of the book-and-claim model by using blockchain technology to ensure that companies and airlines that buy SAF can get credit for its environmental attributes while avoiding issues such as double counting.
“Aviation brings with it so many benefits, not just to corporate travel, but to fostering tolerance and peace, tourism, and economic growth,” said Uppink. “We need to make sure that many who benefit from that are also taking responsibility for sharing the price premium.”
Uppink sees programs like Avelia as a step in the right direction for corporations focused on meeting their own science-based emissions reduction targets. Still, the challenge of decarbonising aviation remains an enormous task that requires cross-sector collaboration.
“The work has been done to find a solution to this challenge, but getting it right is going to take everyone's commitment and investment of time, energy, and resource,” said Uppink. “We need all hands on deck.”.
Lauren Uppink, World Economic Forum
Lauren Uppink is the Head of Aviation, Travel and Tourism at the World Economic Forum where she drives industry strategy and action on climate change, travel security, and the impact of technology on the sector. She is co-author of several World Economic Forum publications including the flagship Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Report and also represents the World Economic Forum on ICAO, IATA and WTTC technical and advisory taskforces.
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