The flavor of the month is “failure”
Air New Zealand announced this week that it would not be able to cut its carbon emissions by 29 per cent by 2030. The levers were “outside their control”, they lamented, which was the polite way of saying there isn’t enough sustainable jet fuel in the world, electric planes die after a few weeks, and no one has invented a low-emissions plane yet. At the moment, the only kind of Net-Zero-flying is not to fly at all.
Current supplies of sacred sustainable fuel are rapidly growing but are barely 0.5 per cent of total requirements. Even though production is expected to triple this year to 1.5 Mt of Sustainable Aviation Fuel, the industry needs 200 times what is currently available.
If someone could just invent an anti-gravity machine or a nuclear jet…
Air New Zealand pulls the plug on 2030 climate targets
By Charlotte Graham-McLay, Associated Press
Air New Zealand has pulled the plug on its climate targets, saying the resources needed to meet them are unaffordable and unavailable.
In a statement, the airline said it was removing its 2030 carbon intensity reduction target and will withdraw from the Science Based Targets initiative.
This is the sound of the free market saying, “It’s a stupid idea”:
Sustainable transport researcher Dr Paul Callister said Air New Zealand’s climate target was unrealistic and was never going to be achieved. … “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.
Of course, if customers thought the world was really going to end, they might be willing to pay for expensive fuels to prevent that. But no one really believes it.
It was all so different just a few years ago – endorsed by the most Experty experts:
Air New Zealand scraps its 2030 carbon emissions target, saying solutions are costly and scarce
Tuesday’s update was a sharp turnaround from a 2022 announcement by Air New Zealand in which it declared itself the second carrier in the world to have its plans validated by the UN’s Science Based Targets initiative aviation framework. It pledged a 28.9 per cent reduction in carbon emissions by 2030 from a 2019 baseline, with a 16.3 per cent drop in absolute emissions.
It was a Science Based Target, don’tcha’know?
Meanwhile, in Australia, most companies are far behind Air New Zealand. Where the airline has tried and failed, 42 per cent of Australian companies have not even started.
Almost 30pc of Aussie companies have ‘no intention’ of meeting climate targets, new study reveals
By Jared Lynch, The Australian Business Review
Now, a survey of more than 500 companies from Schneider Electric – the biggest adviser of Australian commercial power users – says 28 per cent have no intention of meeting their Paris Agreement commitments. A further 42 per cent say they have not begun decarbonising their operations.
The worst performers in meeting climate goals were smaller companies, healthcare, construction, and professional services, with the Schneider survey revealing that 18 per cent did not know where to start, while almost a quarter did not consider it a priority.
Ponder just how devastating this is. Forty-two per cent of Australian companies have not even begun, and another 28 per cent have no intention of finishing.
That’s a 70 per cent failure rate.
This article was originally published by CFACT.
