Podcast: How Can Airlines Avoid Greenwashing Charges?

Aviation Week editors discuss the rising number of formal greenwashing allegations leveled at airlines and the increasing challenge that the industry faces in effectively communicating its sustainability efforts.

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Rush Transcript

David Casey:

Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining us for Window Seat, our Aviation Week Air Transport podcast. I'm Routes editor-in-chief, David Casey. So, welcome on board. On this week's episode, we'll be discussing allegations surrounding aviation greenwashing and the increasing challenges that the industry faces in effectively communicating its sustainability efforts. And to do that, I'm delighted to be joined by my colleagues Victoria Moores, Europe and Africa, Euro chief for ATW, and senior editor, Aaron Karp. Thank you both for being here today. Just to set the scene a little—we're recording this episode three days after Earth Day, which this year saw demonstrations in some major cities around the world, including London, where Extinction Rebellion staged four days of activities, calling for more action to tackle the climate crisis. Part of the media coverage included an interesting newspaper interview that I saw with Denis Hayes who coordinated the first Earth Day in 1970.

And in the article, he denounced companies for using the event as an opportunity for greenwashing, saying it was appalling that corporates use the day to gain positive publicity. Now, while aviation wasn't mentioned specifically, it is an industry that is no stranger to accusations of greenwashing. And despite the collective commitment to reach net-zero by 2050, carriers continue to face a backlash over the messaging around sustainability. In Europe last summer, activists put a billboards and placed adverts on public transport in major cities highlighted the industry's alleged lack of meaningful action. And the crux of the argument there was that sustainability campaigns are nothing more than greenwashing with some going as far to say that airline advertising should be banned similar to the action taken in the tobacco industry. With that in mind, this leads me onto our first discussion point, which involves a legal case in the Netherlands.

Last week, Dutch airline KLM, faced a lawsuit from an environmental campaign group over an advertising campaign promoting responsible flying. The action was supported by Client Earth, and Greenpeace and it challenged whether the airlines claims were acceptable under EU consumer law. Now, Victoria, I know you've been following this case and I've written about it for Aviation Week. Can you tell us a little more about it and why this accusation of greenwashing was brought against KLM?

Victoria Moores:

Yeah, sure, David. So, basically what happened is that during an Air France-KLM shareholders meetings—a very public forum—some environmentalists who were in the audience stood up and announced that they were going to be taking legal action against KLM for their Fly Responsibly campaign. And I guess that the interesting part about this is the fact that if this sets a precedent, then what does this mean for other airlines beyond this? So, the campaign group are calling this dangerous deception about aviation sustainability claims, arguing that basically a little bit like nicotine advertising, airlines shouldn't be allowed to advertise that they're flying sustainably when they're still using fossil fuels. And what they specified is that they're launching this legal action rather than just challenging this through the advertising standards authorities because they want this to be legally binding and they don't want sustainability advertising to continue for airlines. And since then, we've had two other advertising standards cases which have come up against Lufthansa and then that was followed by Etihad, again arguing this case through the advertising standards bodies that the sustainability advertising of airlines is misleading.

David Casey:

Thanks, Victoria. I think it's really interesting and significant that airline claims have been challenged in this way. I think the KLM one is one of the first to come to court, but as you said, it's not the first time that your carrier's been forced to drop an advertising campaign because of greenwashing claims. And in recent months we have seen evidence that claims are being more closely scrutinized by regulators, particularly in the UK, the US and I think there's been a few cases in Australia as well. And rules are being tightened about what can and can't be said about environmental credentials of products and services. It's interesting though that the Lufthansa case, the Etihad and KLM is in Europe and obviously it's a region where flight shaming movement was gaining real prominence before the pandemic. I'm curious to know if you've observed any comparable patterns in the North America, Aaron, whether there've been similar claims leveled against airlines there?

Aaron Karp:

I think the environment, no pun intended, right now is somewhat different in the United States. I think there's obviously a lot of environmental pressure in American politics, but nothing like Europe and the airlines are not being signaled out for environmental sins at this point. I think there's a hyper-focus in the US on customer service with airlines. And so, I think that's where regulators focus is right now is on coming down on the airlines for perceived customer service failures. In terms of the greenwashing, the airline executives in the US, I think look at Europe and say ‘that's coming here.’ Those kind of accusations that you're talking about, those kinds of backlashes are coming to the United States that we're going to see similar things here that we see in Europe. And I think they also believe that their younger passengers are really interested in sustainability and that they have to prove to them that flying is becoming more sustainable.

There are examples in Canada, for example. Recently Sunwing Airlines put out an Earth Day eco-friendly promotion offering flights down to South American spots where that are eco-friendly and where you can do a lot of environmental exploration and groups said, "Well, wait a second, you're flying a plane to get there. So, how can you say this is a hundred percent eco-friendly?" But I do think just in observing what's going on in Europe and observing what's going on in the United States, there is a big difference right now in terms of the pressures airlines are facing. That said, the airlines are making the same sort of commitments. They're all saying they're going to be net-zero by 2050. They're all talking about examples of what they're doing. So, it's not stopping them from moving forward on sustainability, but they aren't facing the political pressure or the court cases that the airlines in Europe are.

David Casey:

So, they're not facing the same kind of pressure yet, but it's a sort of watch this space because it could spread over the Atlantic and we could start seeing more cases against the industry in the years to come. It feels like there is an appetite, particularly amongst the media for accusations of corporate greenwashing and it fits a narrative that the aviation industry is failing to address its environmental responsibilities. Victoria, do you think it's a bit of a catch-22 situation for airline executives? On one hand, if they openly communicate the sustainability efforts, they may face a backlash and legal challenges from environmental groups. But on the other hand, if they remain silent about the efforts to decarbonize, which I've seen referred to as green hushing, then they forfeit the opportunity to share their story. What do you think about that?

Victoria Moores:

Yeah, absolutely. I think that airlines are stuck in a catch-22 because at every single conference that I go to at the moment, you cannot listen to any session with airline executives talking without sustainability being front and center of the agenda. I mean, people are very aware of this problem and aviation is very aware that it needs to decarbonize. Also, it comes in parallel with the acknowledgement that this is a very hard-to-abate sector. I remember years ago speaking to an airline engine manufacturer and somebody asked about the potential for electric aviation and the engine manufacturer replied that on the day that there's an extension cable long enough to power an aircraft from the ground, then we'd be able to have electric aviation. Clearly, things have moved along in leaps and bounds since then, but I think that one of the problems here is how future-focused this is.

So, with the Etihad and the Lufthansa advertising cases that came before the UK Advertising Standards Authority, what the regulator gave us their feedback there is that you are making these claims about being sustainable and consumers might not realize that's not possible now, but you are working towards being sustainable. So, what you're talking about is what you're working towards by 2050 and you're doing as much as you can now, but right now in this moment, what's been done to offset the emissions to or not create those emissions in the first place? I'm sure we'll come back to that later. So, I think it's a question of airlines attempting to share their process, to share their thinking, to share what they are doing in the here and now and going into the future, whereas the regulators want to see more of an end result, and I think everybody wants to see that end result, but it is very, very difficult.

David Casey:

Do you agree with that as well, Aaron? I mean there's so much, as Victoria said, there's so much time, energy, and investment going into decarbonization of activities, but it doesn't feel like the message is necessarily cutting through. It seems that airlines are focusing maybe on the end result rather than the actual journey to where they want to get to rather than sharing that story. Why do you think that challenge is happening at the minute?

Aaron Karp:

Well, I think there's a race against time aspect to this in that the airlines are talking about technologies like sustainable aviation fuel, which is being used now, but on a very small scale, there is a lot of interesting research into hydrogen electric engines, but all of this is pretty far down the road either technologically or being able to scale. For example, you can fly aircraft now on sustainable aviation fuel. There are some flights out there, regular flights particularly out in California where it's 50% SAF, but you just can't scale it up. And so United, as an example, has done a lot of work on sustainable aviation fuels. They're very aggressive on it. They have actually flown a flight, a commercial flight with an engine that's been a hundred percent SAF and one of the engines, but only 0.1% of all the fuel they use is sustainable aviation fuel.

So, as much as they could talk about the positives of sustainable aviation fuel, when someone comes to them and says, well, that's great, but how much of it are using now they're forced to say, well, 99.9% of our fuel is traditional petroleum. And so, I think that is the problem is that hydrogen electric engine is something that we'll be experimented with in the next few years on regional aircraft, smaller aircraft, but that's a long way away for a commercial airliner. The airlines are stuck saying, "Hey, in 2035 we're going to have all this great stuff. We're working towards all this stuff." And then the environmentalists and governments are coming back and saying, "Well, how does that help us right now? How are you reducing your emissions tomorrow?" And I think one of the problems in terms of the messaging is that airlines simply can't do this alone.

It's a very complicated process. For example, we need a system for moving SAF around the world. There's no system for doing that right now. If we had hydrogen electric engines, we'd need a system and infrastructure for moving liquid hydrogen around the world. There's no infrastructure for that right now. And I noticed that American Airlines just put out their environmental blueprint and one of the things they say in is that we have a lot of targets and they're telling people about all their targets, but they say some of these targets American Airlines can influence directly and some require action and deliberation within the aviation industry across sectors and by policymakers.

Meaning that no matter how fast the technology advances that both government investment and research and development and just coordination across sectors to figure out how to develop the infrastructure to make aviation sustainable. It's not just airlines alone. So, I think airlines are stuck where they're saying, this is happening in the future, and we need help with you to get there. And I think that's a difficult message to get forward. It's not just straightforward saying, in two years half our flights are going to be zero emissions.

David Casey:

Do you think part of the problem as well is because that's such long-term? I read a report published by a climate charity called Possible, which assessed 50 aviation industry's own climate targets set since the year 2000. And this report said that 49 of those had actually been missed. They'd either been missed, they'd been revised, or they'd just been quietly ignored. Is it a case then that climate activists just don't take it seriously that aviation wants to decarbonize and is there therefore a credibility issue perhaps, Victoria?

Victoria Moores:

Yeah, I think that in order to be successful in this process, in this communications process, airlines have to demonstrate that they're credible. The promises that they make will be delivered on. And one of the phrases that I liked from it was actually one of IAG's executives, the parent company of British Airways, they said, "We are not allowed to mark our own homework on this." And that's why some airlines are going to external bodies like the science-based target initiative where it's an external body that is judging whether or not these airlines are delivering on their promises. That comment that I just gave was in relation to biofuels. So, sustainable fuels, airlines don't get to decide what's okay and what's not okay. And what you're seeing a lot of is airlines really pushing to make sure that if they're going to invest all of this money in paying multiple times the cost of fossil fuels, they want to make sure that the thing that they are paying a premium for is truly sustainable.

But before I mention that science-based target initiative, and I think that's important because one of the pioneers I would argue in Europe in terms of eco-initiatives is easyJet and they were the first airline in Europe to offset the emissions from the whole of their network. Now, what we saw last year was easyJet actually stepping back from offsetting emissions for their whole network and changing to really invest instead into sustainable technologies. And their reasoning for that was because they're under the science-based target initiative. Science-based targets really wants to see in-sector emissions reductions, not just offsetting elsewhere. And so easyJet decided that they would remove that complete network-wide offsetting and really focus into technologies instead. And there are some really interesting technologies out there. We've seen things like Etihad bringing in contrail avoidance, so trying to make sure that you're managing those non-CO2 effects. This is the thing, airlines really do need to invest into this because otherwise, airlines don't have a future if they're not sustainable.

Aaron Karp:

And I would add that I think one of the issues here in terms of missing targets is that so much of this has been experimental. It's trying to figure out new technologies, trying to figure out new ways. So, for example, 10, 15 years ago, there was a lot of talk about biofuel, but as it turns out, biofuel has a very damaging impact on the world's food supply. So, we switched to sustainable aviation fuel and not making it directly from crops, for example. And that's just one example where there was something that seemed promising, but then you realize in the broader context that it wasn't workable. And I think a lot of these technologies through the years, and we talk about carbon offsetting, which was a big, big trend five, six years ago, and now people have discredited, airlines are moving away from it.

And so, a lot of this is just that the targets are somewhat moving and in some cases understandably, because technologies are just changing, things don't work out. And I think part of the airlines message could be is we're trying everything. We're really open-minded, we've done all these things in the past. And when you're trying things out, some things fail, and you learn things from failures in the modern media environment to talk about learning from failure is again another tough message for the airlines.

David Casey:

Thanks for that, Aaron. Just touching back on something you were saying there, Victoria, about the science-based targets initiative and what easyJet is doing. I think it's important that there is that third-party verification in terms of the sustainability efforts that airlines are going through at the minute. But is part of the problem that there's not one sort of single metric that airlines are being judged against? There seems to be lots of different standards that are being used and that just makes it very difficult to compare between different carriers about what is actually being done.

Victoria Moores:

Yeah, absolutely, David. I think that it's all part of that process as well that Aaron just mentioned. This has been a real journey of discovery with the urgency of the problem really becoming clearer and clearer. And then also the technologies, how the industry is going to get there, becoming clearer and clearer. And I feel as though that's all crystallizing quite nicely at the moment. We're seeing a lot of roadmaps, we're kind of seeing the path that aviation needs to take, but then it's a question of knowing how to measure good, if that makes sense. So, what's happened is there's a whole load of different bodies recognizing that if you're going to get to a place, you need to find a way of measuring your progress towards that target.

So, therefore we need a uniform set of metrics to measure this. But what I've seen at the conferences is a lot of talk about lots of different bodies who have all gone down their own path, whether it's financiers, whether it's corporate travel management companies, whether it's airlines, whether it's IATA, because IATA has done some work on this as well. If we end up with this alphabet soup of metrics to measure this, what we really need is to know where we need to get to, how we are going to get there, and how we're going to measure progress. And I know that it's possibly the slightly more bookish part about sustainability, but I really do think that getting those analytics set so that you really can compare apples with apples across different airlines, different companies, that's really important and I think that's going to get more headlines going forwards.

David Casey:

Thanks for that, Victoria. Moving on a little, we've talked about some of the challenges that airlines are facing and some of the things they're perhaps not doing as well. Conversely, are there any examples that you've seen Aaron of airlines that are not only really innovating with what they're doing sustainably but also communicating that really well to passengers and to consumers?

Aaron Karp:

Well, I think we mentioned United before, and they're a good example of a company that has been doing this for a long time. They started investing in sustainable aviation fuel, I believe as early as 2009. And like I said, they've actually done things. I mean, I think a big part of the messaging is this is what we've done, not necessarily what we're going to do, or this is what we've done and that shows you what we can do. So, United can say we fly flights on a daily basis with sustainable aviation fuel. We've operated a flight where one engine entirely had sustainable aviation fuel. United would say if we had the resources at more airports to do it, we would do it. There's just not enough SAF out there by a mile.

And so, I think part of the message is here's an airline that's doing a lot of things right, but it's still at the infancy stages. As I said before, 99.9% of their fuel is still traditional. So, I think that's an example of an airline that has done some good things and has communicated them because it's things that they have actually tangibly done. And you see that with some of the other airlines around the world. It seems to be a better message to say, look what we've actually done and that can be proof that we can do more in the future.

David Casey:

Victoria, are there any examples that you've seen that stand out for you?

Victoria Moores:

I think it's a tricky one, David, purely because of the thread of this entire conversation where you do stand the risk now in Europe that if you attempt to communicate what you are doing, then you may face some severe backlash for that. I think that one airline that did stand out was the old Norwegian, so this is the predecessor to the current Norwegian that we have where they were actually actively communicating to passengers about the benefits of using 787s on routes, which is the kind of thing that we know about within the industry, but doesn't really get communicated onto the passenger. So, they did stand out for me. I mean companies like Finnair, we had a podcast with them a couple of weeks back. They've decided to not go for a reclining business class seat so that it's lighter, it requires less maintenance, it's more eco-friendly overall.

You're not really hearing them shouting about that. And I think that's going to be the thread going forwards is if airlines are expected to be absolutely perfect with what they're doing, you can't do that in a process of discovery, in a process of technological development and innovation around this. But you can recognize the urgency of the problem work towards meeting that urgency. And like Aaron said, communicating what you have actually done, not aspirational goals, which seems to be what these companies are being shot down for is saying, this is what we hope to do rather than this is what we've done.

David Casey:

So, it's all about getting the messaging right and the storytelling of where you're up to now what you've done and potentially weaving in with what you aim to do, but not having the focus on the end goal and that end destination.

Victoria Moores:

Yeah. I also think that being told constantly that you've not done enough, when we know that there is a huge, huge challenge here, it's recognizing progress towards the end goal and putting an urgency behind that.

David Casey:

Before we finish this episode, I just wanted to go back to where we started, which was in the Netherlands because we recently saw the Dutch government push to reduce the number of flight movements at Amsterdam Schiphol by about 60,000 per year from November. Now, this would represent a cut of about 12% on the current 500,000 cap. And obviously, unsurprisingly, KLM and other airlines launched legal challenge and pushed back on this saying it would jeopardize his Amsterdam's position as a global hub. And earlier this month the Dutch court actually sided with the carriers ruling that the flight cuts broke EU law. But despite this, the threat of the cuts remains very real. It's a stated policy of the government and it's something that could happen within the future. So, I suppose my last question to close is unless aviation industry as a collective whole better communicates the journey towards net-zero and that storytelling that we've spoken about, will it lose the right to grow and therefore are we likely to see more political interventions like what's happening in the Netherlands, placing limits on flights unless we get that messaging clearer and better?

Aaron Karp:

So, I think within with the perspective of airlines and the aviation industry and aircraft manufacturers has always been to grow, to continue growing. And one thing they will say is that while flying is very common in parts of the world, particularly Western Europe and the United States and parts of Asia like Japan. There's a lot of the world where people haven't really started flying yet, particularly in the middle class. And so why would we stop the growth now? We would deprive all these people of the economic social opportunities of traveling by air.

But I think that the problem for the aviation industry and something they have to be prepared to confront is from outside the industry. A government, an environmental activist, even just a common voter can say, "Well, look, there's so many flights up in the air right now. There's so many connections. Why do we keep having to put more and more in the air?" And I think just generally speaking, there's no longer really any belief or notion. I think anywhere that growth can occur on a large scale in any industry without it being sustainable. So, yes, the only way aviation is going to continue to grow is to be able to do that in a much more sustainable way and eventually to not emit carbon because decarbonization not just reducing carbon emissions is now the name of the game. And I think that's where things stand.

Victoria Moores:

Yeah, so I think in terms of here in Europe, I think that process is already well underway, David. So, we've got various regulatory packages coming through the European Commission that are all about sustainability, and literally they are forecast to cost billions for the European air transport industry between what we need to do around sustainable aviation fuel and other various things like emissions trading. So, I think already the regulators are getting heavily involved in sustainability. How much of that is based on the perception that's been built up of aviation being a huge polluter? I don't know. But already airlines are having to act in this area. Question is whether or not they're able to afford the additional costs and the impact that's going to have on airfares because aviation does have to decarbonize. There's no two ways about it, but it can be done the painful, very expensive way or a cooperative, collaborative way, which is I think what the aviation industry would prefer to get those end results.

David Casey:

Now, I did say that would be the final question of this week's episode, but we do have some breaking news that I think is important to mention before we end, and it surrounds the European Union's ReFuel EU policy after a political agreement was reached between the European Parliament and the European Council. Victoria, I know you've been covering this in the past. What is the latest now with this new agreement and why would you say it's important in the context of what we've just talked about?

Victoria Moores:

Yeah, I think that this is a significant agreement. This is part of the Fit for 55 package, which is a package of eco-regulation that's going through the European institutions at the moment. And we just discussed in the conversation sustainable aviation fuel is a really big part of the solution to aviation's environmental impact. So, what the parliament and the council have agreed is that there's basically going to be an increasing proportion of sustainable aviation fuel being blended into airport's fuel supplies. The implication of this is really more onto the fuel providers that they're the companies that have got to blend the fuel in the first place and supply that, obviously airports have to create the infrastructure to make it possible for airlines to upload the fuel. But there will, as with anything, be a cost implication to of increasing the amount of sustainable fuel out there, especially considering that production is so low at the moment.

So, basically what will happen is they're looking to get a 2% blend of sustainable aviation fuel by 2025 rising up to 70% by 2050. And the European institutions are saying that this will take out about two-thirds of the emissions of aviation by 2050 compared with no action. So, it is quite significant.

Aaron Karp:

This ties back into some of our conversation earlier in which we were talking about how much of a gap there is between what the aviation industry can do now and what they can do in the future. And we've talked about how the supply of SAF is just so small right now that even a carrier like United Airlines, which is heavily invested in it only uses 0.1% of their total supply of SAF. So, you look at these targets, there is supposed to be 6% of SAF at EU airports by 2030, 20%, 2035, 34%, 2040. But as we talked about, if you're in this debate with politicians and environmental activists, they can come back and say, "Well, in 2030 you're still 94% traditional fuel. In 2035, 12 years from now, you're still 80% traditional fuel."

And so, I just point that out because there's this enormous challenge that the industry has of trying to become sustainable becomes decarbonized, but at the same time, the solutions are slow moving and will take the time to implement. And in terms of staff, it depends on an infrastructure being built up to deliver it to airports and get it on planes. And that's a project that it goes well beyond the aviation industry.

David Casey:

Yeah, absolutely, Aaron. As you say, the solutions are there, but it's going to take time and it certainly can't be achieved by the aviation industry in isolation. Finally, before we finish, I am curious to know about the potential impacts of the ReFuel EU package that will have for consumers. I understand that there's going to be an EU label from 2025, which will enable comparisons between the environmental performance of flights. Is that right, Victoria?

Victoria Moores:

Yeah, absolutely. So, basically the European Parliament wants consumers to be able to see, to get a rough idea of how environmentally efficient the airlines that passengers are flying on are. So, that brings us back to the conversation earlier about metrics and the importance of coming up with standards. And from what I'm seeing here, we are looking at the kind of thing like the CO2 efficiency per kilometer might be the measure, but I think it's really important to remember that it's not only eco-efficiency important, it's also total environmental impact. So, for example, if a low-cost carrier has a sizable growing operation, they're operating new aircraft, they're going to be able to show a fairly good eco-efficiency level, but overall, their total emissions may still be growing. So, I think that's going to be one of the challenges of this discussion. Again, it's back to that same question of making sure that there isn't greenwashing going on so that consumers can make an informed choice, and so that ultimately aviation can minimize its impact on the environment.

David Casey:

Which of course is what everyone in the industry wants. So, on that note, I think we're all out of time for this week's episode. So, Victoria and Aaron, thank you for joining me today, and thanks to our producer Michael Johnson. Finally, thanks to you, our listeners. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure you don't miss us each week by subscribing to the Window Seat Podcast on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. Until next week, this is David Casey disembarking from Window Seat.