BUSINESS NEWS
Ashton rejects call to reduce flights as unrealistic
“things not moving faster”, noting Tui operated a first flight with sustainable aviation fuel 11 years ago “and there is not significantly
Spain Sustainability Day: Experts assess aviation’s efforts to cut emissions. Ian Taylor reports Jane
Ashton
were to drive, environmentally it would be terrible.” She argued: “SAF is not a
EasyJet sustainability director Jane Ashton rejected a call from the Aviation Environment Federation to reduce holiday flights, telling the Spain Sustainability Day conference: “We have to be realistic.” She acknowledged frustration at
panacea. It still emits carbon, but carbon is sequestered during the production. A huge amount of research has gone into it and into whether sufficient feedstocks will be available. It looks like there will be.” Ashton also noted: “We’ve seen
more SAF being used today”. But Ashton pointed out
70 million tourists travelled to Spain last year and 60 million by air and said: “That is not going to reduce any time soon. We can’t switch all those on to rail. If they
significant announcements on hydrogen [fuel] in the last few weeks. We’re working with Airbus on how to bring a 100% hydrogen-fuelled aircraft to commercial manufacture by 2035. We’re increasingly confident hydrogen can be transformative for short-haul flying.”
‘Let’s stop talking about sustainability to clients’
Travel companies should stop talking to consumers about sustainability and get on with providing more sustainable products, according to the head of Pura Aventura, an operator which specialises in sustainable holidays. Thomas Power, Pura Aventura
chief executive, told the Spain Sustainability Day conference in London last week: “We keep bashing our heads on the idea consumers will demand sustainability. They will not. We need to speak differently.” He suggested the growing number
of consumer surveys which suggest increasing demand for sustainable holidays are misleading, arguing: “There is all this data telling us people are choosing sustainability, but there is a gap between their intention and action, between what they say and do, and this gap is probably greater in travel than anywhere.” Power told the conference, hosted
by the Spanish Tourism Office: “We give ourselves permission to relax
travelweekly.co.uk
when we go on holiday. We don’t set the alarm. We don’t go on a diet. That doesn’t tally with the language of sustainability. When we talk about sustainability, consumers hear fear, concern, guilt. Our language has to change. Let’s stop talking about it to clients. Let’s stop asking them to offset flights. [But] let’s develop sustainability from suppliers up.” He insisted: “Nothing we say
on sustainability touches on the indulgence of travel. We can talk to each other about carbon and carbon leakage, but to our visitors we need to talk about amazing places and the quality of accommodation and food. “It’s time to act [on sustainability]
not because consumers are bashing our doors down to buy sustainable travel, but because it’s a business opportunity to sell what is amazing and, by the way, also sustainable.” However, Spanish Tourism
Office director general Miguel Sanx Castedo said: “We need to inform people what we do as an industry,
Thomas Power
and what we mean by a sustainable transformation. We need to educate people on how to travel sustainably.” Castedo highlighted the
Spanish government’s allocation of €3.4 billion “to the transformation of tourism” and argued: “We need to speed up the transformation. We either do the transformation or we will not be a viable destination.” He added: “As the world’s biggest
destination, we have a responsibility to the industry. We want to show leadership to the rest of the world.”
4 MAY 2023 Cait Hewitt 47
‘Aviation nowhere near where it needs to be on emissions’
The aviation industry is “nowhere near where it needs to be” on decarbonisation and will not hit its carbon reduction targets. That is according to Cait Hewitt,
policy director at the Aviation Environment Federation, who told the conference: “Sustainable aviation is an aspiration not a reality. There are huge uncertainties as to whether it can be delivered.” Hewitt argued: “The emissions
from aviation should have been falling as the warnings from scientists have got worse. Instead, they have been growing. “Options for cutting emissions
are scarcely off the drawing board. The sector is nowhere near where it needs to be. Anyone who offers a sustainable holiday to Spain needs to not sell a flight.” Industry efforts on
decarbonisation up to 2050 are pinned largely on sustainable aviation fuel replacing kerosene. But Hewitt pointed out: “SAF delivers no reduction in the amount of CO2 coming out of aircraft. It can, in theory, reduce the overall CO2 in the atmosphere through carbon capture in the production process.” She told the conference: “The
idea we have massive feedstocks [for SAF production] is misleading. All the main sustainable feedstocks will be hard to scale up.”
PICTURE: Steve Dunlop
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