Aviation’s Decarbonisation: The Business Travel Opportunity

Aviation plays a vital role in connecting people, cultures and commerce. Yet the sector faces a challenge as aviation could represent almost a quarter of global emissions by 2050.⁽¹⁾ With its distinct characteristics, business travel, forecast to reach $1.5 trillion in spending by 2024, has the opportunity to drive aviation’s sustainability future.⁽²⁾

Fostering connectivity is a fundamental aspect to any business.  With over 4,000 companies pursuing science-based emissions targets, covering 39% of global market capitalisation, businesses need to balance the value of in-person connections while meeting sustainability commitments.⁽³⁾

“Business travel can play an important role in decarbonising the aviation sector as a whole" says Tarek Helmi, Energy & Chemicals sector lead, Deloitte North and South Europe (NSE), who also leads low-carbon solutions globally, during a webinar entitled ‘Decarbonising Business Travel’.

In a world where corporate travel spend is expected to grow 8 percent to 12 percent

this year, sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) emerges as one of the most important near-term solutions for cutting carbon emissions.⁽⁴⁾  However, the challenge is scale. Currently SAF accounts for less than 1% of aviation’s fuel requirements.⁽⁵⁾ Without policy incentives, replacing all conventional jet fuel with SAF on a typical long-haul flight would increase airline operating costs or ticket prices by 30% to 200%.⁽⁶⁾

“Airlines have a critical role to play. We purchase SAF and use it but there's not enough available and the cost must come down,” says Diana Birkett Rakow, senior vice president of Public Affairs and Sustainability at Alaska Airlines, during the same webinar. “A lot of what we are using today is small volumes, short-term contracts, but it is safe, effective, and is having an impact right now on the industry.”

The path forward requires both collaboration and demand certainty. As Shell's Ojha observes, “You can't get a SAF project off the ground unless you have offtake or demand certainty. It's not a bankable project if you don't have revenue certainty." 

Success requires coordinated action across the entire value chain, agreed Alaska Airlines’ Birkett Rakow. “We’re primed for continued advancement,” she continued. “But it will take all of us to do so — to take the steps; to co-invest in technologies and make progress together.”

In order to reach the billions of gallons of SAF needed, “a powerful technical tool like blockchain helps with traceability, trackability, auditability and ultimate scalability,” explains Nora Lovell Marchant, vice-president of Global Sustainability at American Express Global Business Travel.

Avelia, one of the world's first blockchain-powered book and claim platforms for SAF, allows business travellers to access the emissions reduction benefits of SAF (compared to conventional jet fuel) regardless of their physical location or flight routes. Book and claim platforms enable broader value chain participation to unlock SAF demand at scale. Through the platform, companies can "book" physical SAF volumes and "claim" the associated environmental attributes, while simultaneously providing crucial demand signals that help drive SAF investment and production scale.

The book and claim platform's value lies in its ability to facilitate participation across the value chain. "Book and claim enables companies, especially business travellers, and airlines to procure the environmental attributes associated with physical SAF and that scales the number of parties who can help co-invest in SAF," explains Marchant.  

This enables demand for SAF to be driven by both airlines using physical SAF (Scope 1) and from corporate customers claiming the associated environmental attributes (Scope 3). As Shell Aviation's Ojha notes, "With two different groups generating demand this gives a lot of positivity that it's not just airlines, but corporate customers that also have a role to play.”

While innovative solutions like book and claim are emerging, scaling them while maintaining momentum is complex.

"It takes time to understand how to set up SAF transactions — companies should be clear on the methodology to calculate emissions and transparency in the chain of custody is critical. There shouldn’t be double counting — only then can companies have the comfort and credibility to claim the carbon reduction and impact made,” says Deloitte NSE's Helmi.

While the regulatory landscape continues to evolve, Shell Aviation's Ojha emphasises that this shouldn't halt progress. "We can't wait for perfection in regulation or accounting guidelines,” he said.  “We can't wait for perfection in the platforms, or technology.  We need to ask ourselves whether we are taking the right action now."

As the foundations for scaling SAF production solidify, success will depend on maintaining momentum while ensuring the ecosystem moves forward together at a pace the market can sustain. Each stakeholder from fuel producers to airlines and corporate customers play a vital role in building a sustainable future for aviation.  

Perhaps it was most succinctly put by Alaska Airlines' Birkett Rakow, "we need to have the impatience to act now, but the patience that if it takes some time to scale, which SAF will and must, that we don't give up on it as a solution."

¹ Decarbonising Aviation: Cleared for Take-off
² Business travel spending recovers in all regions but Asia and Europe | Reuters
³ SBTi Monitoring Report 2023 - Science Based Targets Initiative
⁴ Corporate travel study 2024 | Deloitte Insights
⁵ SAF production to triple to 1.5 mil mt in 2024 but progress slow: IATA | S&P Global Commodity Insights
⁶ Decarbonising Aviation: Cleared for Take-off