Climate.aero founder/CEO Florian Albers (left) spoke with Aviation Week Network Editor Jeremy Kariuki at EBACE 2024.
GENEVA—The discourse between climate activists and business aviation players has not always resulted in substantive change. In 2022, Greenpeace protestors chained themselves to private aircraft at Amsterdam Schiphol Airport, a moment that moved Florian Albers into action.
As a pilot himself, Albers began to think about his favorite hobby and how it affects the world around him. “In the end, we all have to work toward a net-zero world,” he told Aviation Week Network ShowNews at the European Business Aviation Conference and Exhibition (EBACE 2024) here. “I’m going to go flying, and I go just for my pleasure, but then I should also take responsibility for that.”
To take on that responsibility, Albers began researching ways to offset his carbon emissions but was met with limited options for aircraft owners specifically. “I started thinking: What can I do about that? And then, obviously you have the thought about electrifying, but then the range is really small,” he said. “You can’t take so many passengers, so that was not really an option for me.”
According to Albers, program options for aircraft carbon offsets in Europe are few and far between, so he decided to take matters into his own hands by founding of Climate.aero.
“It’s more than only compensating,” he said. “It’s like a platform for perfect transparency reporting. You have to be open about your emissions, and you have to be open about what you do about it.”
As part of its services, Climate.aero offers free public transparency reporting for aircraft owners on its website. There, the public can access emissions and carbon-offset data for specific aircraft listed by tail number. Additionally, aircraft owners can upload third-party compensation data from other programs on which they have reported that data.
In addition, aircraft owners have the option of using Climate.aero’s “Set and Forget” service—which draws on the company’s in-house algorithm to calculate emissions based on Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast data and aircraft performance profiles throughout all phases of flight—to purchase carbon credits automatically based on aircraft utilization.
Like other new programs, Climate.aero offers a “Badge of Honor” on which aircraft owners can display a QR code that contains a link to their aircraft’s sustainability profile on the Climate.aero website.
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