Tag: airline

When it comes to sustainability, one of the biggest problems any fossil fuel burning industry or company faces is that of credibility.

For example, in the infamous John Oliver show where he took apart carbon offsetting (a theme we’ll return to), Oliver spent a lot of airtime in making fun of Ryanair’s Michael O’Leary, showing an interview where O’Leary starts talking about “whales and dolphins” when asked about the airline’s (voluntary) carbon offset programm

Climate change activists simply don’t believe that companies that burn fossil fuels are actually serious about net zero, and think that any sustainability initiative is a smokescreen to carry on business as usual – or greenwashing.

And environmental groups have done research to support their point of view.  For instance, over the weekend, think tank Planet Tracker released a report accusing the APEW – the Alliance to End Plastic Waste – of doing next to nothing

Yesterday there were two announcements in the next generation aircraft space, one from Heart Aerospace and another from Eviation. Together they tell us a lot about where the sector is heading.

Heart’s announcement was the bigger of the two.  

That’s because it involved equity deals with Air Canada and Saab, firm orders from Air Canada, and the announcement of a new facility to produce Heart’s aircraft in Gothenburg called Northern Runway.

Overall, the optics of the announcement were excellent.  On display were votes of confidence from major aviation companies, United remains the major customer and Scott Kirby appeared on video to talk about how the airline intends to be unique in reaching net zero without recourse to carbon offsets.

Those votes of confidence are a good indication of Heart Aerospace’s aircraft actually making it from the airframe sitting in the hangar right now to commercial flight in 2028.

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Did you know that companies have been taking CO2 from the atmosphere and turning it into vodka, perfume, dresses, sports shorts, sunglasses, sneakers and car parts – to name just a few examples?

Many of the same companies are also looking at turning carbon into Sustainable Aviation Fuels (SAF), or E-Fuels.

Carbon removal and transformation is a growing area. It includes some innovative players who could help aviation move to net zero, and so it’s the subject of our latest power-list.

This comes as the industry is slowly starting to get to grips with the carbon removals space.  For example, at the Farnborough Air Show, Airbus and a group of airlines signed an MOU with Canada’s Carbon Engineering.

Supersonic aircraft company Boom is working with Climeworks, which has the world’s largest Direct Air Capture (DAC) facility in Iceland, as well as Prometheus, which is looking to develop a revolutionary new