Aviation sector is ‘willing, ready and committed’ to sustainability

The aviation sector is “willing, ready and committed” to reach its sustainability targets by 2050, Laia Barbarà, community lead for sustainable aviation at the World Economic Forum (WEF), said at…


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The aviation sector is “willing, ready and committed” to reach its sustainability targets by 2050, Laia Barbarà, community lead for sustainable aviation at the World Economic Forum (WEF), said at the Sustainable Skies World Summit 2022.

This year’s Sustainable Skies World Summit takes place on 17 – 18 Apr 2023. SSWS returns to showcase and support industry’s efforts towards meeting its net zero commitment, now given further impetus by the adoption by world governments of an aspirational net zero goal for aviation at the ICAO Assembly in October.

100 companies committed to SAF

So far, 100 companies have committed to the Clean Skies for Tomorrow initiative – a coalition led by the WEF to push the use and supply of SAF to 10 per cent by 2030, Barbarà said.

Speaking in 2022, she commented: “This is very exciting because we are getting there and things are moving, the sector is doing its homework.

“We need to get everyone on board, but already 100 is a great number. It is a very ambitious target that we are pushing forward to. 10 per cent SAF by 2030 is the equivalent of saving 60 million tonnes of CO2 per year, creating at least 300 SAF plants, and the equivalent of having 300,000 green jobs, so there are a lot of benefits.”

“I am quite optimistic that the aviation sector is going to reach this target of net zero by the middle of the century, because we do have the ambition, the industry is willing, ready and committed,” Barbarà said.

“We also have a plan. In addition there are already existing technologies that have been proven that are available today. SAF is the short term solution that is available and we need to put all our efforts into scaling it up while we keep developing battery-electric and hydrogen-fuelled aircraft.”

 

Watch the full session here

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