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31 July, 2024

Air New Zealand scraps climate targets blaming expensive fleet renewal and scarce alternative fuels

Edited by Travel Weekly

Air New Zealand has scrapped its climate targets saying the resources needed to meet them are unaffordable and alternative fuels unavailable and will withdraw from the Science Based Targets initiative.

In a statement the airline said it was removing its 2030 carbon intensity reduction target blaming “the affordability and availability of alternative jet fuels”, as one of the reasons.

“Potential delays to our fleet renewal plan pose an additional risk to the target’s achievability,” Foran said in the statement. “It is possible the airline may need to retain its existing fleet for longer than planned due to global manufacturing and supply chain issues.”

Work had begun on a new near-term climate target that would better reflect industry challenges, he said.

Air New Zealand chair Dame Therese Walsh said the airline remained committed to reaching its 2050 net zero carbon emissions target.

“Our work to transition away from fossil fuels continues, as does our advocacy for the global and domestic regulatory and policy settings that will help facilitate Air New Zealand, and the wider aviation system in New Zealand, to do its part to mitigate climate change risks,” she said.

Sustainable transport researcher Dr Paul Callister told RNZ Air New Zealand’s climate target was always unrealistic and was never going to hit its target date.

“We’ve seen report after report saying that sustainable aviation fuels are not being produced and the quantities they should be and part of the problem is that airlines are not willing to pay the full cost of it. They’re wanting cheap fuels and they’re wanting government subsidies to pay for those fuels. It’s a bit of a vicious cycle,” he said.

“The second thing is that Air New Zealand has been upgrading its fleet over time, so it’s a relatively new fleet. So to get those efficiency changes in the time that they talk about, it was never going to happen, the electric planes were never going to arrive in that time frame.”

Callister said a national emission reduction regulation for airlines was called for.

“Air New Zealand is the biggest player, domestically at least, so unless you have all the airlines under some sort of regulatory regime where you’re actually forcing emission reductions, whatever in New Zealand says, you really won’t make a difference,” he said.

“The Ministry of Transport suggests that domestic aviation is going to increase quite significantly and international aviation’s going to grow at about 3.2 percent per annum right through to 2031. In that report the second emission reduction plan has no assumptions that electric planes are going to arrive by 2030 and has no assumptions that sustainable aviation fuel is going to make a difference.

“Basically what we’re looking at is that the industry being given a free hand to keep expanding and keep expanding emissions.”

Professor Sara Walton from the University of Otago’s climate change research network told RNZ that setting voluntary targets are meaningless in terms of meeting essential carbon budgets.

“A 2050 net zero commitment is not enough… We need 2030 commitments to help mitigate and stay within the carbon budgets for a 2-degree world. It is incredibly disappointing to see any company move away from such ambition.”

While demand for air travel continues to rise, the adoption of decarbonisation tools such as sustainable aviation fuels and more efficient aircraft has fallen behind. The share of SAF used by six major airline groups that report consumption is lower than 1 per cent, according to a report last month.

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