Watch: the role of business travelers in making aviation more sustainable
Business travelers and corporations will play a crucial role in helping the aviation industry become more sustainable by clearly understanding their emissions footprint from flying and then partnering with airlines to reduce that impact, according to a senior sustainability executive at Delta Air Lines.
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“Corporations are walking alongside us in this journey,” Amelia DeLuca, Delta’s Vice President of Sustainability, said in an interview.
The first thing companies need to do is understand the emissions impact of their business travel along with possible solutions, DeLuca said in an interview with Joel Makower, Editor of Greenbiz.com.
Making aviation more sustainable: the role of business travelers
Description:
Joel Makower, Editor of GreenBiz.com, interviews Amelia DeLuca, Vice President of Sustainability at Delta Air Lines. Amelia discusses the importance of partnerships between airlines, corporations, and business travelers in making aviation more sustainable.
Title: Making Aviation More Sustainable: The Role of Business Travelers
Duration: 4:23
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This episode: Making business travel more sustainable, Part 3 of 3
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Joel Makower
Executive Editor
GreenBiz.com
Joel Makower:
What are you hearing from your corporate customers about what they expect of Delta and other airlines in the coming years from a sustainability perspective?
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Amelia DeLuca
Vice President, Sustainability
Delta Air Lines
Amelia DeLuca:
Well, first off, they're like, “I love this challenge. I've never been more excited to learn something new.” So, I thought that was a really great testament to, again, the integration, the excitement that's coming from the people that are going to lead us through the transition on the business travel side.
Then they're saying, “I'm hearing about it all day long from everyone. My leadership is asking me what the plan is. My employees are asking me. What am I supposed to do? How do I travel in a more green way? And what are you doing to, again, pick those partners that are the most sustainable partners that we can have?”
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Video footage provided by Delta Air Lines
So, I think corporations are walking alongside us in this journey in the sense that they're saying, “I'm all in on this.” They know Delta is all in on this, but we’re all kind of saying, “Okay, what does this look like? How do we build partnerships?”
Sustainable aviation fuel partnerships is a great example of something that happened fast, pretty organically. One corporation saying, “Hey, I want to get involved in this.” And then you got a whole bunch of other people saying, “Yeah, I'm in on this, too.” I think we're going to continue to see that evolve as we go where we find new and creative ways to engage at an enterprise level, as well as directly between the brand and the consumer.
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Video footage provided by Delta Air Lines
And there's such a benefit to that because that's how Delta has always built such great brand recognition and trust, is not only to attack it through our partnerships, through supply chain, and businesses but also through the end consumer.
Our corporate customers are having the same pressures that we're having right now as a company and as an airline. They're hearing from their investors, as well. “What is your plan? What is your plan to hit Net Zero, to hit your own science-based targets?”
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Video footage provided by Delta Air Lines
As soon as we had corporate customers coming to us and saying, “Hey, my business travel emissions are actually a really big part of my greenhouse gas emissions.” For certain companies, we are actually sometimes the majority of their greenhouse gas emissions, depending upon how they operate and what type of business model they have.
What's really exciting about SAF is that when customers came to us and said, “Hey, what can you do?” Well, the first thing we said is, “One, we're committed to carbon neutrality today. We are carbon-neutral, so rest assured your travelers should feel comfortable when they're traveling on Delta.”
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Video footage provided by Delta Air Lines
But then the second thing is if they need to achieve their own climate goals, we have a solution with sustainable aviation fuel. And as soon as we went out there with our first deal with Deloitte, the interest that we received from other corporations has been… It's so inspiring to see how many corporations between small to big, all industries are saying, “Hey, I want to learn more about this. I would like to talk to my senior-level leadership about this product and figure out how I can fit it into my portfolio.”
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Video footage provided by Delta Air Lines
It's a win-win situation because it allows the corporation to impact their scope three business travel emissions, while simultaneously we impact our scope one.
Joel Makower:
So, what's the ask of the business traveler in helping bring along the demand at the rate that we need?
Amelia DeLuca:
I think the first step within any corporation at any level – from an individual traveler to an executive to the person who is working in their business travel space – is having education and awareness for what the impact of your business travel is, as well as what the solutions are.
So, we talk a lot about education. Just understand the basics of sustainability. Understand your footprint. Look at the data. Let the data guide you to where your impact is. That's that transparency that's so important. We know our impact. We know our impact as a company. We know other companies know their impact when they travel on us.
Then the second thing right after that is to say, “Okay, I want to take a step now. It may not achieve my climate goals of 2030 or 2035, but there are things available today for me to take steps.” And many corporations are doing that because you see corporations who are also carbon-neutral, who are also using offsets.
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Video footage provided by Delta Air Lines
But in the journey forward, sustainable aviation fuel is the most critical thing that we have to achieve our joint efforts between me as an airline as well as that corporation who is trying to reduce their business travel emissions.
So, the ask here, essentially, to our business travel community is to understand that there's a solution available now. One, choose your brand. Just like you choose your retail brands, choose your travel brands. And then if you're looking further, again, to hit those science-based targets, to hit your own internal emissions reductions targets, because we also want our corporations to be with us to help us figuring out: how do we engage on this as we move forward? How do we form new partnerships? How do we talk to consumers about that? That's all in its infancy right now, and we want our corporate customers who are our top partners in everything we do to be part of this journey, just like they are with everything else.
Joel Makower:
Thanks, Amelia.
Amelia DeLuca:
Thank you, Joel.
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“We talk a lot about education. Just understand the basics of sustainability, understand your footprint, look at the data, let the data guide you to where your impact is. That transparency is so important. We know our impact as a company,” she said. “Sustainable aviation-fuel partnerships is a great example of something that happened fast, pretty organically. I think we're going to continue to see that evolve as we go, where we find new and creative ways to engage at an enterprise level, as well as directly between the brand and the consumer.”
Getting in the game with SAF
Aviation faces a steep challenge in its goal to decarbonise. Passenger traffic is expected to double over the next 20 years and experts say there is no easy solution to mitigating the sector’s emissions. Unlike with other forms of transport, electric or hydrogen-powered aircraft are decades away. Sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) is a reality today but needs more support from customers, investors, and policymakers to scale more rapidly.
Delta has embraced sustainability as a core part of its business strategy. In 2012, the Atlanta, Georgia-based airline committed to capping its emissions at that year’s level, then followed that in 2020 with a pledge to be carbon neutral. Delta has also emerged as a big buyer of SAF and will begin taking delivery of more than 303 million litres (80 million gallons) in 2024, compared to 11 million litres (3 million gallons) a year now, DeLuca said.
“In the journey forward, sustainable aviation fuel is the most critical thing that we have to achieve our joint efforts between me as an airline and that corporation who's trying to reduce their business travel emissions,” she said. “Get in the game now with us because we also want our corporations to be with us to help figure out how we engage on this as we move forward.”
Raising awareness, changing behaviors
As the world emerges from the pandemic with renewed ambitions to travel, Delta will start engaging business and leisure travelers about how to fly more sustainably, DeLuca said.
“I think the next most important stakeholder in this is our everyday traveler,” she said. “There is so much we can do together when the time is right. But first, with international travel just returning, the main focus right now is how do you manage travel in a post-COVID world, or still in a COVID world. After that, we're going to be asking consumers to hold hands with us.”
DeLuca pointed to changing consumer behaviors in other areas of sustainability, such as recycling or composting, or researching climate-friendly brands.
“Those are all things that people are choosing to do voluntarily. They're not receiving a reward. A little bit of information goes a long way when you understand the impact of how your everyday habits can impact our world. There's only going to be more heightened awareness,” she said.
DeLuca said her conversations with corporate customers have her feeling optimistic despite the daunting task ahead.
“Every day we read something else about how the Earth is warming more quickly than we thought, or how governments haven't passed the measures that we need, or how consumers don't care about this as much as we'd like them to be. But every day, each one of us in this space wakes up and says, ‘What can I do today to make the world a better place?’ For me, that's super fulfilling.”
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