Axios House: Sustainability leaders spotlight resource reuse for energy transition

NEW YORK – From turning crops into sustainable aviation fuel to recycling carbon fiber, repurposing resources is crucial to driving the clean energy transition, sustainability leaders said at Axios House at Climate Week and the UN General Assembly on Monday.

Why it matters: Resource conservation can convert waste into value, helping industries cut emissions and reach sustainability goals.

• Axios' Amy Harder, Ben Geman and Chuck McCutcheon hosted conversations with Delta Air Lines chief sustainability officer Amelia DeLuca, World Resources Institute president and CEO Ani Dasgupta, and McLaren Racing sustainability director Kim Wilson. The event was sponsored by Suntory Global Spirits.

Today, sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) is derived from soy and other crops, but DeLuca said future sources could include materials such as corn or wood waste. She stressed SAF's "value chain approach," which affects corporations, farmers and rural communities.

• "You've got a whole rural community that's like, 'I actually don't know where my future is,'" DeLuca said. "Sustainable aviation fuel, it's not just a blip. It's not a five-year thing. This is a multiple-decades' worth of a product that we're going to need as an industry that also helps those communities, and that's again where you have that win, win, win."

Meanwhile, Wilson noted that McLaren Racing pioneered the use of recycled carbon fiber in the racing industry, which can reduce emissions by up to 90%.

• After discovering that materials accounted for a significant portion of its footprint, McLaren Racing worked with a supplier to recycle aerospace waste.
• "The thing about new materials is you have to think about how do we not compromise between on-track performance … for sustainability, but we also need to find ways to balance that and innovate," Wilson said.
• McLaren Racing has already used recycled carbon fiber for non-safety-critical parts in Austin and Silverstone and is exploring what's next.

Separately, Dasgupta said technology is transforming the clean energy transition "at a scale and speed and price that we didn't even think possible."

• However, Dasgupta noted that "technology itself doesn't produce good outcomes. We need to orchestrate that outcome." He said collaboration across industries and tech innovators is needed to help ensure a smooth transition.

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In a View From the Top conversation, Kim Marotta, Suntory Global Spirits' chief environmental sustainability officer and head of enterprise risk management, addressed the importance of industry collaboration in resource conservation.

• "You can't do it one company alone, you can't do it one farmer alone, you can't do it one community alone," she said. "When we look at our watersheds, so many of our peers and competitors are in those watersheds, so we don't compete against each other. … We have projects in Mexico where we have Pernod Ricard, Brown-Forman, almost every one of our peers and competitors involved in replenishing the water in that watershed for the long term."