Axios House at COP28: The Future of Sustainable Aviation

The final event for Axios House in Dubai for COP28 on Dec. 6 highlighted the future of sustainable aviation and how industry experts are looking to push sustainable aviation fuels (SAFs) to the next level in order to meet net zero goals.

Catch up quick: Axios senior climate reporter Andrew Freedman and 1 big thing host/editor Niala Boodhoo hosted insightful conversations with United chief sustainability officer Lauren Riley, Carbon Direct vice chairwoman Nili Gilbert, and World Energy Council secretary general & CEO Dr. Angela Wilkinson.

Why it matters: Aviation makes up roughly 2% of global energy-related carbon emissions.

Riley detailed the climate crisis' effect on the aviation industry:

• "...our industry is focused on safety. Number one, number one, number one is safety and that will never change. But this conversation around…what impacts safety, what drives safety concerns at a company, it's beginning to expand to include climate…And we have resiliency plans already in place…to say 'here's what we're going to do when these crises arise,' because they will."

Gilbert said how diversification of pathways for SAF is needed:

• "...We're seeing a lot of progress. A lot of the flights that we're seeing today are focused on pathways that use waste oil to produce sustainable aviation fuel…Where we need to continue to see progress is in additional pathways for the production of sustainable fuel. There's only so much waste oil in the world and so much flying that we want to do."

Dr. Wilkinson discussed the importance of inclusive collaboration when it comes to innovating to improve climate change:

• "The biggest challenge we face is if we really want to address climate change, we're going to have to learn more and more effective ways of collaborating at scale. There are many, many ways of doing that…The inclusive collaboration imperative is about asking ourselves, are there other and better ways of collaborating than the way we think we might be most comfortable with?"

Sponsored content:

Boeing chief sustainability officer Chris Raymond on the state of play and the importance of the sustainable aviation industry:

• "I've been in the business for 38 years now. I've gotten to see this industry solve some really hard problems. And, you know, this industry put a person on the moon in 1969, so we can solve hard problems. This is a hard problem. It's attracting cash, It's attracting entrepreneurs, it's attracting startup companies. Engineering enrollments are up at colleges that we recruit from. All good things for this industry. And the world likes to travel… we all know how we felt in the pandemic, and we know how important that human connection is, and aviation enables that globally."

Thank you to Boeing for sponsoring this event.