S3:E3: United Airlines Flies Towards Greener Skies

The aviation industry will be one of the toughest sectors to decarbonize. Yet, most of the major airlines have announced net zero emissions goals by 2050. So how are they going to get there? Dan and Emma talk with Aaron Robinson, Senior Manager of Environmental Strategy and Sustainability at United Airlines, about how United is investing in more efficient aircraft, sustainable aviation fuels, and carbon capture and storage facilities to get to net zero - without buying offsets. He also discusses the global collaborations and partnerships that are needed to bring down carbon emissions from aviation worldwide.

Show notes:

Sustainable Aviation Fuels article series

United Airlines is a nonprofit partner of EESI and provides general support for our work.

Sign up for our bi-weekly newsletter, Climate Change Solutions, for insight on the latest innovative climate solutions and environmental policy in action.

Follow us on social media @eesionline

About this Podcast:

With all the depressing climate news out there, it’s sometimes hard to see progress. The Climate Conversation cuts through the noise and presents you with relevant climate change solutions happening on the Hill and in communities around the United States.

Twice a month, join Environmental and Energy Study Institute staff members as they interview environmental, energy, and policy experts on practical, on-the-ground work that communities, companies, and governments are doing to address climate change.

Whether you want to learn more about the solutions to climate change, are an expert in environmental issues, or are a policy professional, this podcast is for you.

The Climate Conversation is published as a supplement to our bi-weekly newsletter, Climate Change Solutions.

Episode transcript:

Dan: Hello, and welcome to The Climate Conversation. I'm Dan Bresette, Executive Director of the Environmental and Energy Study Institute. And joining me today is my co-host, Emma Johnson. Hi, Emma.

Emma: Hey, Dan. I’m really looking forward to this interesting interview today about sustainable aviation. It pairs really well with a recent article series on sustainable aviation fuels that we have out right now that was written by EESI policy fellow Jeff Overton. He used to work for American Airlines, and so he brings a really amazing wealth of knowledge to those articles. And so today I'm excited to learn more about the challenges and opportunities of decarbonizing the aviation industry.

Dan: Yeah, me too. 100%. Unlike Jeff, who is a pilot, at best, I am a passenger, but I find air travel fascinating and airplane technology fascinating. This is one of those topics that when we talk to people, sustainable aviation is just interesting, it seems to everyone so we are very, very pleased to have our guests with us today. We're going to learn more about their sustainability work. And by their, I mean United Airlines. EESI is actually one of United Airlines, nonprofit partners, and they provide general support to EESI. Our guest today is Aaron Robinson. Aaron is Senior Manager of Environmental strategy and sustainability at United. He manages their Eco-Skies Alliance program, which is a group of leading global corporations that help to power a more sustainable aviation future. His work focuses on developing sustainable fuels and reducing United emissions. Aaron, welcome to our show today.

Aaron: Thanks so much. It's great to be with you both.

Dan: So let's dive right in. In 2018, United committed to cutting its emissions in half by 2050. And then in 2020, United updated its commitment to being carbon neutral by 2050. That's a big difference. Could you walk our listeners through how United plans on achieving that goal?

Aaron: Yeah, thanks, Dan. So there's a lot of things that airlines have always done certainly around fuel efficiency, and then by extension, reducing our carbon emissions. That's actually how I started my career out was working on operational fuel efficiency. So it's figuring out how do we fly those aircraft more efficiently, use less fuel, use less time, ultimately, and get passengers to their destination, cleaner, and then more efficiently and on time, in fact, those are things we're always doing. And it's kind of business as usual to undertake those. Certainly, alongside that is going out and buying new aircraft and new technologies. Today, at United, we have over 550 new aircraft on order. And those aircraft are each about 17 to 20% more efficient than the aircraft that they're ultimately going to replace. So 17 to 20% is a pretty good cut. But it's also one that's obviously not going to get us to carbon neutrality for quite some time. So we also have a few additional levers beyond that, that we're working on to really get to that carbon neutral net-zero goal. A few of those levers include looking at what is there we can do beyond just a regular conventional jet engine, do we need to be using jet fuel, where can we find other cleaner sources to power the aircraft. So electric and hydrogen are certainly the sources that are getting the most attention these days, we actually have investments in both of those spaces. The challenge to those is that we need a lot of new infrastructure to be able to power those aircraft, both to generate the electricity and clean hydrogen, but then also to get it to those aircraft and essentially refuel them or recharge them at the airport. So that takes a lot of time and money. That also has another challenge of those not being yet energy dense enough. So those technologies can help power, let's say a shorter-range aircraft or a smaller aircraft, but it can't get us across an ocean anytime soon. And so for that, the next lever we have, and actually one we've been working on here for over a decade is called sustainable aviation fuel or SAF for short. And this is jet fuel, still using jet fuel to power the aircraft. But the difference is where that fuel is made from. So instead of coming from fossil fuels and being extracted from the ground and emitting new carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, it's actually avoiding greenhouse gas emissions in the production process, or perhaps removing them from the atmosphere as let's say a crop is being grown to ultimately produce that jet fuel. So SAF today gets about an 80% reduction in the lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions compared to a conventional jet fuel - a lot better than that 17 to 20 from buying the new aircraft. So that's the biggest lever we have. It's one that's going to take a lot of time, money, and energy to scale up. But we know that we're also not going to be able to get to that universally everywhere, every airport we fly to. And so we need more beyond that. What caused us to ultimately increase our ambition level in 2020 and set a new, even deeper carbon reduction goal was finding and recognizing and being confident of a new pathway. And that's actually carbon capture and sequestration available to us. So actually removing the CO2 from the atmosphere directly. And that's kind of that final piece for us. Uniquely among airlines, our goal of decarbonization is actually to do so without offsets. So some airlines today have said, We're carbon neutral already, we're buying a lot of offsets, they don't necessarily have to do the hard work then to truly, ultimately, change their operations. We believe and what we're hearing from our customers is that ultimately, that's what they want to see, they want to see some real meaningful change, not just going and paying our way to carbon neutrality directly, but doing the hard work to actually truly achieve it in our operations. And carbon capture is actually that final piece that lets us take care of any of that remainder.

Emma: Great. Thanks, Aaron, for laying out that roadmap for us. You already mentioned sustainable aviation fuel. So we're talking fuel that's not made with conventional diesel or another source like that from fossil fuels, but rather made from waste or made from feedstock or agricultural residue or something like that. Can you talk to us about what United is thinking about using as its sustainable aviation fuel and where that might be produced or where that feedstock source might be coming from?

Aaron: Yeah, absolutely. So we've been doing quite a bit of work in this space, really since 2009, actually we were the first US airline to do any kind of SAF flight whatsoever. And back then it was a single test flight that we did using crops as the basis for that fuel. So imagine, the crop grows, and as it's growing, it's ingesting CO2 out of the atmosphere. The challenge for anything with crops is you need a lot of land to grow them on, you need a lot of water and sunlight to feed them, you need a lot of fertilizer to feed them. And all of that has costs that really add up and have some other side effects that you have to be a little cautious about, are you accidentally deforesting the land and in the process to create room for that cropland? Or are you diverting land away from food production to fuel? And both of those certainly have negative environmental and social consequences to them, too. So we actually had a philosophy shift several years ago. And it was recognizing that there's a lot of constraints, in fact, around crops. And instead, if we go and look elsewhere, on waste, for instance, then it's actually a lot more efficient, we avoid a lot of those concerns. There's plenty of waste to go around at least at the present time. And it's a lot more affordable to go and use waste for it, for example. So one of the companies we partially own called Fulcrum Bioenergy, their plan is actually to make SAF for us using landfill waste. And for them, one of our co-investors actually in waste management, waste management normally has to pay a landfill to take the garbage collects. But with Fulcrum, instead, they can send that that landfill waste to Fulcrum directly. And Fulcrum would either pay very little for it certainly a lot less than growing the crop where maybe even potentially get it for free. So there's a real big economic win there that gets it to scale a lot sooner and makes it more affordable at the same time. To answer your question on where we're doing this today. Today, ever since 2016, every single flight we have from Los Angeles International Airport is partially powered by SAF. So our production for that is a partner called World Energy. They're based in the town of Paramount, California, which is right next to Los Angeles. And it's about a 15 mile drive from their facility to LAX, where the fuel is delivered. So it's really in fact, the shortest supply chain of SAF in the world. And they're using not landfill waste, but they're using used cooking oil and other waste fats, oils and greases, in fact, to produce that SAF for us. So we know that solutions like that on the waste side, they're not going to last forever. They're not going to be able to scale up forever. But there are other solutions that are kind of next in the pipeline for us and for airlines in general. Things like actually using the CO2 from the atmosphere, but that's going to take, I think, a few more years in fact to develop and come to fruition.

Dan: United CEO, his name Scott Kirby, and he frequently talks about United's commitment on climate. For instance, he was at COP26, the international climate negotiations that took place last November in Glasgow, Scotland. And there he spoke about scaling up SAF production on a panel about climate mitigation strategies for the aviation industry. What will be required in terms of building up or building out the SAF industry to help the US and the global aviation industry be carbon neutral by 2050?

Aaron: Thanks for that, Dan. There's a lot of factors I think that we need to ultimately, really make this a reality. So the easiest answer is always you need a lot of money, right? A refinery costs several million dollars to construct, and where's that money going to come from. So there's definitely a financing gap that exists today. And we're working to fill that by directly investing into some of these producers. But we also need support there. And one important lever for support is actually around government incentives. So governments have always provided support for new transformative technologies that can make its citizens lives better. And we think SAF is actually an important one in that process. So we have a lot of incentives, in fact, already available for SAF. But still uneconomical when you compare it to conventional jet fuel. So today, SAF, when you compare it to the everyday price of jet fuel, it's about two or three times higher still. And that makes it very challenging to go out and say, Yes, we're going to go buy a lot of it. If we were to do so it would ultimately bankrupt an airline, if we were to go out and buy it at that kind of scale. So we need government support really to scale it help scale up that industry, and make it so that it's plentiful, and ultimately affordable, as well. And not just something that clean flying, for instance, is a luxury for them, rather than something for everyone. A couple other challenges I think we see in that spaces, is certainly around awareness. Now, I think this is one barrier that's really been falling quite a bit the last few years, but we have a challenge in that SAF is designed to look exactly the same and perform exactly the same as conventional jet fuel. And when a passenger is flying on board, they're never going to see it, they're not going to be able to detect a difference, because it's designed to operate and perform for us the exact same way. And that's a good thing from the standpoint of being able to do it economically. But it's a bad thing from the standpoint of customers being aware and demanding it more. So a great example, I think is in in the space of cars. For example, the Toyota Prius was incredibly successful, I think, because it was designed to look different and a buyer of it could show off their green credentials, versus Honda's version was just simply a hybrid Civic, it looked exactly the same as the regular Civic, and it didn't perform anywhere nearly as well, in the marketplace for that reason. And then just a  final challenge, I think we face is actually one around culture, as well. So airlines, of course, are very safety conscious organizations and have that built into the mindset of every employee. The challenge can really come when you're trying to develop and do something quite a bit different, and move away from the tried and true. And so that's a challenge that we have to overcome and figure out how do we build a willingness to take risks, and do new and different things, and challenge the status quo. So that's another kind of built in challenge just within the industry itself.

Emma: Thanks, Aaron. And you've been talking a little bit about bringing a lot of different airlines a lot of different groups together for this work, because it's going to require a lot of different airlines and groups coming together to work on this. So I want to bring up two programs I'm hoping you can talk more about one is the Eco- Skies Alliance program, which you manage. And then also at COP26, another organization called the Sustainable Aviation Buyers Alliance, which announced new memberships at COP26. That includes United and a handful of other air carriers. So can you talk about these two groups and why it's important to bring airlines together to work on these issues?

Aaron: Yeah, absolutely. So I think cooperation has always been a big mantra in aviation. And it really dates back to early in our histories when we had to cooperate and collaborate together on safety, in fact. So back in the 1930s, when flying was really getting going in this country, if there was an accident that happened, it wasn't just bad for the airline that had the accident, it was bad for everyone. And what we did ultimately, as an industry is we started doing lots of information sharing, data sharing, best practices sharing, to really improve that safety. And through standardizing we're able to, in fact, improve that safety margin even further and make it so that in fact, flying is the safest form of transport anywhere in the world today. So we're trying to do the same thing with sustainability. We need to have uniform standards and processes across the board, in fact to make it so that way sustainability in aviation is really affordable. Now to your question around these two organizations. So the Eco-Skies Alliance program that I manage, this is a group of nearly 30 corporate customers that we have that have actually partnered with us in fact to go out and essentially finance and fund, what we call the green premium for SAF, that price difference between unconventional jet fuel and sustainable aviation fuel. It's companies like Deloitte, DHL, HP, Microsoft, and Nike, for instance, that are that are working with us helping fund that difference. And then in return, they actually get and receive the emissions reductions from the SAF, that they count, in fact, against their own carbon footprint from flying on United. So it's really powerful. For us, it enables us to go out and buy a lot more SAF. It's powerful for the financers that are looking at funding SAF facilities, because they can see that there's a clear demand for SAF in the marketplace. And there's an ability and investment return for them for lending their money, or putting it into equity. And ultimately, it gets to that scale, and affordability in fact, much sooner. The second organization you mentioned was the Sustainable Aviation Buyers Alliance, or SABA for short. So this is actually a group of primarily corporate buyers, such as the ones I just mentioned, and their focus is on cooperating and collaborating within that travel buyers space to go out and fund in the near term SAF production. But then in the long term, other means of more sustainable flying, so we're actually a member of what they call their aviators group within SABA, that's a group on the actual supplier side. So it's us and a few other airlines, that in fact, are procuring SAF and trying to meet those members needs and work with them together in concert. So there's definitely a lot of different organizations in this space are collaborating together on a lot of different areas, in fact, to really advance together, and one of the things we certainly tried to do is harmonize our approach and our objectives and the work we do to get there more efficiently and effectively.

Emma: You've already mentioned that United has been clear to the organization's not going to be buying offsets as part of its carbon neutral plan, which I think was a really interesting piece to hear from you. So you mentioned that carbon capture and sequestration is going to be an important part in order to make up that difference. Can you go into a little bit more detail about how this is going to work for you all in terms of maybe where some of these plants might be located or how you might be using the captured carbon in the future.

Aaron: Thanks for asking about that, Emma. We've got quite a number of levers available to us and the carbon capture space is really what we see as that final piece. So today, we have announced an investment in a company called 1.5. Their plan is to build a large number of what are called direct air capture facilities in West Texas and New Mexico, that would ultimately capture CO2 and store it underground. Potentially that CO2 could also be reused, in fact, to produce other products, for whether for airlines, or certainly for other industries, renewable plastics, for example. So for us at United, we don't have a clear plan on exactly how many of those facilities we're going to need. But we know it's going to be some certain number and we have flexibility around that. To put it into perspective, a typical American generates about 20 tons of CO2 per year, as a result of their daily lives and demands on the environment. United every year, we generate about 40 million metric tons of CO2 per year across our operations, serving the 150 million customers, we fly every year. Each of these facilities from 1.5, those have the ability to capture a million metric tons of CO2 per year. So theoretically, we could go out and invest in or partner with or receive the rights to the capturing of CO2 from 40 of those facilities. But rather than doing that outright, we want to find what's the most effective and affordable approach. So it's going to be a combination of those levers of buying new aircraft, switching to sustainable aviation fuel and working with these direct air capture facilities and using those rights from them. We need to find that most affordable capability to decarbonize both faster and in more efficiently and cost effectively.

Dan: That's really interesting, Aaron, and want to ask a little bit more about the aircraft themselves. You've mentioned that United has a large order for new aircraft. I think you said they were on average, 17 to 20% more efficient than the older models that they're replacing. That's all fascinating. When it comes to the next generation of propulsion, what does it mean for United to be making these investments in electric flight and hydrogen powered aircraft? And what does that mean for the rest of the aviation industry? And what does it say about United’s vision for the future of aviation?

Aaron: Yes, I think there's a lot of different capabilities and opportunities that really want to be unlocking here. Certainly the new aircraft we have on order most of those are in the 150 to 200 seat range with the ability to fly, call it 3000 miles. So really can do any kind of trip you need around the US. And to serve a large number of customers. In the near term for us, the electric and hydrogen aircraft we're looking at are actually geared towards some very different markets, in fact, and we view it as expanding our market coverage and capabilities, while also serving our customers better at the same time. Maybe focusing on the electric side, first, we've actually got two different investments in that space. So one is a company called Archer Aviation. In the near term, their focus is on what's called an electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft. So it's for passengers, and it's able to go and take passengers, not too far call it 60 mile range. But we can think of it as able to get passengers from downtown to the airport or from an outlying suburb, over to the airport and really connect in fact, to the United network much more efficiently. So rather than having to fight traffic, and face a lot of emissions creation, on the road on the highway, passengers are then able to in fact get to the airport on a much more efficient basis using the renewable electricity that would go into that Archer aircraft. The second investment we have on the electric side is a company called Heart Aerospace. And their plan is to produce a small 19 seat regional aircraft for us. And we view that as really a great potential to fly into a lot of smaller markets. So examples for this would be cities like Modesto, California, or Lafayette, Indiana, cities that United has served in the past but actually cut service to because there's not enough demand in them to really justify some of our larger aircraft. Today, the smallest actually flies about 50 seats, for example, but something in the 19-seat category can actually meet that level of demand with an appropriate level of service. And for customers in those cities, they can get easier access to the United network, they can fly and connect to other flights much more easily than having to drive to our Chicago hub or San Francisco hubs directly. So saving emissions again, on the ground for those customers. The hydrogen side, we've actually got a different slightly different approach there. The company we've invested in is called Zero Avia. And their plan is to produce several hydrogen-electric powered engines for us that we could potentially retrofit onto some of our regional aircraft. So quite a bit larger in size, to get really a cleaner propulsion on that regional fleet. But with both of these technologies, really, the focus, at least in the near term, is on something that's a short range, smaller capacity aircraft. Today for United the regional fleet is about 15% of our total emissions. So again, to get to the scale and capability of flying, let's say 250, 300 people across an ocean, it's still going to be a few decades away. But we're very optimistic that these technologies can ultimately scale up to deliver that capability.

Emma: Aaron, thank you so much for coming on the podcast, it was really great to hear from you about what United is doing, and just the details of how you all are approaching this journey to carbon neutral, because I know it's not going to be easy. It's going to be challenging for every organization out there. So its really interesting and exciting to hear the path that United is thinking about going towards moving forward. So thank you so much for coming on the podcast.

Aaron: Thanks for having me, was a real pleasure today.

Dan: Thanks, Aaron.

Dan: Well, that was a fascinating conversation. Very interesting to hear about what Aaron's doing and what is happening across United and what's happening across the aviation industry. This podcast is being recorded and it will be released in early March 2022. It's been two years since I've been on an airplane. But at some point, I've got some travel coming up. And I'm looking forward to getting back out there. That that's a fairly carbon intensive activity to undertake traveling by air. It's nice to know that there's some things underway that will help make that a little bit less impactful, and a little bit less of a contributor to climate change. It's going to take some time, though. And I think one thing I took away from Aaron's discussion was, you know, there's efficiency improvements, there's the new propulsion technologies. One thing we didn't talk about a lot was sort of, more efficient air traffic control. We didn't talk a lot about ground operations. But this is a big, complicated industry, and you’ve got to start somewhere and sounds like we're going to be using, to the extent that we're flying thousands of miles at once sounds like we're going to be using liquid fuels for a while. So these investments in SAF are probably a really good thing.

Emma: Yeah, I totally agree, Dan. And you mentioned a number of other levers that we could be thinking about in terms of decarbonizing the aviation industry. Another one that we didn't really talk about is the policy aspect of it, you know, like what policies can the federal government put in place to incentivize production and use of SAF and what that will mean for the industry as a whole. And to get into all these topics more, everyone should really check out the sustainable aviation fuel articles that Jeff Overton, our EESI policy fellow wrote, because he goes really in depth into all these different topics about SAF and in a four-part series really breaks it down and introduction, a policy background, its connection to corporations and airlines, and what airlines are doing and what is happening on the global stage with SAF. So it’s a really interesting in depth look into all of the different aspects of SAF and so I really encourage everyone to read those and check those out if you're interested in learning more. And if you want to learn more generally about EESI’s work around sustainable aviation, head to our website at eesi.org and follow us on social media at @eesionline for all of our recent updates. The Climate Conversation is published as a supplement to our bi weekly newsletter, Climate Change Solutions. Go to eesi.org/signup to subscribe. Thanks for joining us and see you next time.