INTRODUCTION

We’re now into 2023, which means that we’re

27 years away from the industry net zero goal
agreed by ICAO.
We’re also only seven years away from the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC) target of halving emissions by 2030.
All this comes as the sustainability spotlight is
increasingly on aviation.
With environmental campaigners seeing
overconsumption as a root cause of global
warming and perceiving air travel as a symbol
of so-called ‘luxury emissions’, we expect to
see climate activists increase the pressure on
the industry in 2023.
More direct action - disruptive protests at
airports - is, in fact, one of our predictions for
2023.
But there are others, which give reasons
for optimism as the industry starts to
decarbonise. For example, advances in battery
technology should help make regional electric
aviation a reality.
We also expect to see more airlines get
involved with emerging carbon capture
technology, be it through buying carbon
storage credits, or investing in companies that
turn CO2 into E-Fuel.
Read on for our full list of eleven sustainable
aviation trends for the next year.
And if you want to find out even more, head
over to our Green Hub for a range of industry
reports or get updated with our weekly
newsletter.

Dirk Singer
Head of Sustainability, SimpliFlying
[email protected]
WE EXPECT 2023 TO BE...
4
4
THE YEAR OF NON-CO2 EMISSIONS
A November episode of RTE’s “Hot Mess” that includes Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy
podcast claimed that contrails are “at the as well as airlines such as Alaska, American,
centre of a conspiracy of silence about the Southwest, Virgin Atlantic, United, Google
climate damage that aviation is doing.” Research and Imperial College London.
While that may have been the case in previous Many more airlines will now get to grips with
years, contrails and non-CO2 effects are now non-CO2 effects and contrails.
extensively talked about.
The good news is that solving the contrail
In her end-of-year blog post, for example, problem is, compared to other challenges,
Transport & Environment aviation director potentially easier to solve.
Jo Dardenne called CO2 emissions only “the
In May, after working with KLM, SATAVIA CEO
tip of the iceberg”, with non-CO2 effects
Dr Adam Durant said - “By implementing small
accounting for two-thirds of aviation’s climate
changes to a minority of flights, eco-conscious
impact.
operators can eliminate the majority of their
In 2022 we saw the first airlines look at non-CO2 climate footprint with minimal impact
contrail mitigation. on day-to-day operations.”
For example, on a November flight from As well as contrails, expect to see a bigger
Washington to Abu Dhabi, Etihad worked with focus on nitrogen oxides. It’s worth noting
SATAVIA on contrail prevention. that Amsterdam Schiphol’s 2023 flight cap is
being justified on the basis of curbing noise
In October, Delta Air Lines announced that
and NOx.
it is collaborating with MIT on research to
prevent persistent contrails, which are roughly Taxes being introduced in Brussels on short-
10% of all contrails. haul and private jet flights similarly take NOx
as well as CO2 emissions into account.
Meanwhile, the Rocky Mountain Institute is
at the head of a contrail impact task force

THE SUBJECT OF AVIATION’S NON-CO2 IMPACT, SUCH AS

CONTRAILS, WILL MOVE FRONT AND CENTRE IN 2023.

January 2023 5
3
3
THE YEAR OF INTENTIONAL FLYING

AWARENESS IS GROWING ABOUT THE CLIMATE IMPACT OF AIR

TRAVEL. AS A RESULT, IN 2023, WE EXPECT TO SEE MORE PEOPLE
MAKING MORE CAREFUL FLIGHT CHOICES, SUCH AS CHOOSING
THE LEAST CARBON-INTENSIVE ROUTE, COMBINING BUSINESS
TRIPS AND VACATIONS, OR EVEN SWAPPING SHORT FLIGHTS FOR
THE TRAIN.

In a New Year’s LinkedIn post, SimpliFlying like ‘Travel Smart’ want businesses to reduce
CEO Shashank Nigam showed how he had their travel by 50% compared to 2019 levels.
reduced his pre-COVID quota of 45 annual
Then the trend of “bleisure” travellers
flights down to 15.
continues - people who combine business
He’d done so by thinking carefully about and vacations as Shashank has done, with
whether he needed to be at conferences in not every segment of that trip being made by
person (in almost every case, the answer has plane.
been no), combining family vacations with
Shashank himself took the train on a trip
business trips and taking the train on shorter
from London to Scotland, choosing it over a
routes (for example, London to Edinburgh).
domestic UK flight.
He also made a point of flying direct where
Train companies are pitching themselves as
possible, which is better both for the airline
more sustainable alternatives to short-haul
and the environment, while offsetting every
flights; one example is Trainline’s “I came by
flight.
Train” campaign.
Shashank calls this “intentional flying,” a trend
In fact, as we show in another one of our
we expect to see more of in 2023. This also
trends, legacy airlines are seeing some
ties into a number of other trends:
advantages in cooperating with their local rail
In the business travel world, many network.
corporations are targeting travel as a way of
Finally, the backdrop to all this is a growing
reducing their Scope 3 emissions.
awareness by the travelling public that flying
For example, KPMG told Reuters that the firm drastically increases an individual’s carbon
has an internal carbon price to encourage footprint.
employees to think twice about flying. That
In Ipsos-MORI’s 2022 international climate
price then funds green investments.
study, 52% said they avoid taking flights at
According to KPMG’s Gavin Geminder, least from “time to time”, which is an increase
business travel “should be reserved for the in- over the past year of 11%. So, on some level,
person moments that matter.” the messaging about aviation is hitting home.
Meanwhile, big four accountancy firm EY This comes as 2022 saw celebrities being
‘nudges’ employees to choose greener options panned for taking short private jet flights.
in its internal travel engine, or not to fly at all. YouTuber “Mr Beast” was criticised for flying a
student to Paris to buy him a baguette, a stunt
Quoted in the Financial Times, EY’s Global
that emitted as much CO2 as the average
Vice Chair Steve Varley says, “For example, if
Pakistani does in a year.
they are booking a flight which is returning
on the same day, we start to nudge them to Of course, flights will still be full in 2023. But
turn the meeting into a Teams [online] meeting businesses and individuals will be thinking
rather than a physical one.” more carefully about their flight choices.
Expect to see more companies adopt this
philosophy in 2023, especially as campaigns

January 2023 7
 1
© Marten van Dijl / Greenpeace
1
THE YEAR OF DIRECT ACTION

WE WILL SEE MORE DISRUPTIVE CLIMATE CHANGE PROTESTS

AT AIRPORTS, FOR EXAMPLE, RUNWAY OCCUPATIONS.

According to Andreas Malm, a Swedish 2023 will be a year of direct action.

academic, climate activist and author There will be high-profile, disruptive protests
of ‘How to blow up a pipeline’, hardly targeted against air travel, designed to
any transformative social movement has generate maximum publicity.
succeeded without an element of non-peaceful
We expect this to be the case despite the
protest.
announcement by Extinction Rebellion (XR) in
As a result, Malm says that to be effective, the the UK, that in 2023 they will shift away from
climate change movement will need to shift to disruptive tactics.
acts of sabotage, especially against what he First of all, this announcement is UK specific,
calls sources of ‘luxury emissions.’ and secondly, more radical groups such as
‘Just Stop Oil’ have since emerged - Just Stop
Whether or not we will see actual damage or
Oil, for example, was responsible for throwing
sabotage at airports, we do expect there to
soup at the Van Gogh painting, which made
be an increased level of activity by climate
news headlines worldwide.
change groups when targeting aviation.
As a result, expect to see the blocking of
runways, as happened in Munich in December,
and sit-ins in private jet terminals, similar
to the global protest that took place in
Amsterdam and other cities in November.
In fact, a good indicator of what to expect
comes from 2019 and early 2020 before the
pandemic caused the air travel shut down and
so a stop in aviation-focused protests.
Before COVID hit, protests stopped fossil fuel
delivery trains reaching Stockholm’s Arlanda
airport. Meanwhile, at London Heathrow
Airport, activists threatened to disrupt flights
by flying drones around the perimeter of LHR.
We also expect to see more court cases
against Governments’ perceived failure to
tackle aviation emissions, as happened in
the UK and Sweden, and legal action against
airlines seen to be engaged in so-called
greenwashing (see our greenwashing report).
Why are climate change groups taking these
steps? We’ve explored this in a long article on
our website.
But there’s a belief that we are facing a global
emergency, and so drastic measures are
needed.
This is then combined with a feeling that ‘big
aviation’ is engaged in greenwashing talk
instead of action, while carrying on with fossil-
fuel burning growth.
January 2023 9
2
2
THE YEAR OF TRAINS AND PLANES
In July 2022, airline group Star Alliance
welcomed German rail company Deutsche
Bahn as its first intermodal partner.
In a statement, the group said that from now
on, you’d only need one ticket to travel from
(for example) the Southwest German town of
Freiburg to Singapore.
The Deutsche Bahn / Star Alliance is a taste of
things to come. 2023 will be a year of deeper
railway and airline cooperation.
Could 2023 see a rail network like Thalys
(which operates high speed) trains from Paris
to Brussels, Amsterdam and Cologne) join
Skyteam?
This comes as there are moves to curb short-
haul flights in Europe. In France, that resulted
in a small number of domestic routes being
banned in order to entice travellers to take rail
services instead.

COOPERATION BETWEEN
AIRLINES AND RAIL
COMPANIES WILL DEEPEN,
INCLUDING POTENTIALLY
ANOTHER RAIL NETWORK
JOINING AN AIRLINE
ALLIANCE.
The response by some airlines has been to
turn what could have been a problem into a
potential opportunity.
For example, in a December Financial Times
interview, KLM boss Marjan Rintel encouraged
more train travel, saying that rail companies
should be seen as collaborators and not to smaller cities/regions, which often have an
competitors. airport served by a single LCC competitor.
There are benefits for airlines in getting on Finally, it’s another way of potentially
board with the idea, a point made by another generating those all-important ancillary
Financial Times piece - “Favouring trains over revenues, via ticket commissions.
planes may be smart for legacy airlines.”
The train/airline cooperation is, of course,
Of course, it gives them a chance to polish only applicable in places where there is a
their environmental credentials. developed rail network. That’s largely in
But where capacity is tight, for example, in Europe, but not exclusively so. For example,
Amsterdam due to the 2023 flight caps, it Japan is one example of a non-European
frees up slots to be used for more profitable country that has high-speed railways.
long-haul routes. It also extends their reach

January 2023 11
5
5
THE YEAR OF BETTER BATTERIES

THIS YEAR WE EXPECT TO SEE FURTHER ADVANCES IN BATTERY

TECHNOLOGY, TURNING ELECTRIC REGIONAL AVIATION FROM A
FLIGHT OF FANCY TO A REALITY.
In her excellent ‘Sustainability by Numbers’ Look out for projects spearheaded both by
newsletter, our World in Data’s Hannah NASA, as well as by a number of startups in
Ritchie worked out that an EV battery in the climate tech space.
today’s Nissan Leaf would have cost half
As opposed to relying on lithium-ion batteries,
a million dollars in the 1990s (had the car
NASA is currently researching solid-state
hypothetically existed). Today it costs $6000.
batteries with a specific focus on aviation via
Hannah’s article shows that the trajectory of its SABERS project.
electric batteries is following that of solar
SABERS has already demonstrated the ability
power, with costs falling by more than 98%
to generate 500 watt-hours per kilogram,
since 1991 and a 3.4x increase in energy
more than double the 260 wh/kg of the best
density.
cars and higher than the 480 wh/kg required
Though her article was car specific, the for regional flight.
relevance for aviation is obvious.
At the same time, there are startups looking at
Electric and hybrid-electric companies like electric aircraft battery technology.
Eviation and Heart Aerospace have attracted a
This includes Belgian start-up Solithor, which
lot of attention over the past year.
last year raised €10 million in seed funding to
Yet questions remain about battery develop new solid-state lithium battery cells.
technology. In particular, sceptics wonder if
Another company developing solid lithium
it really will be able to power a 30 or 50-seat
batteries is Cuberg, whose founder Richard
regional aircraft for any meaningful distance.
Wang was featured by Time Magazine as
Hannah Ritchie’s figures are a reminder an ‘eco-preneur.’ Cuberg claims that once
that battery technology has advanced developed, his batteries can fly an all-electric
considerably, and will continue to do so. regional aircraft for 300 miles.
As a result, in 2023, we expect to see Over the next year, look out for more news
advances in battery technology to make this from projects like SABERS as well as other
more of a reality. startups aiming to produce a workable electric
aircraft battery.

January 2023 13
6
6
THE YEAR OF NET ZERO INFRASTRUCTURE
Transitioning to net zero aviation means a
new infrastructure will be required at the
airport level. While that was already being
developed in 2022, the establishment of this
will accelerate in 2023.
With both Airbus and Rolls Royce betting on
hydrogen combustion aircraft, airports are
preparing for it.
For example, New Zealand’s airports could
become a hydrogen cluster, while Christchurch
Airport in New Zealand and Hamburg Airport
in Germany are cooperating on green hydrogen
development.
Meanwhile, electric aircraft will require
charging facilities. And here, instead of
drawing on the electricity grid, some airports
are creating their own energy sources.

AIRPORTS WILL PLAN FOR

NEXT-GENERATION AIRCRAFT,
AND THERE WILL BE INCREASING
DECARBONISATION OF GROUND
OPERATIONS.
Edmonton Airport (YEG) in Canada is
establishing a 627-acre, 120-megawatt solar
farm. When completed, Airport City Solar is
slated to be the largest airport solar farm in
the world.
However, electric aviation is a particular
opportunity for smaller players. And so, we’ll
see more regional airports start to create their
own microgrids with the help of organisations
such as Clear Skies.
The final and possibly most immediate piece
of the airport infrastructure puzzle will be the
ongoing decarbonisation of airport operations
in 2023.
This comes as United Airlines invested in
sodium-ion battery maker Natron as a way
of electrifying ground equipment, as well
as providing charging capacity for electric
aircraft.
Similar to the Natron / United deal, we expect
to see more of these strategic investments
taking place in 2023.

January 2023 15
7
7
THE YEAR OF CARBON CAPTURE

A FEW AIRLINES DIPPED THEIR TOES IN THE CARBON CAPTURE

SPACE IN 2022. MANY MORE WILL FOLLOW IN 2023. WE ALSO
EXPECT TO SEE CO2 CAPTURE BEING USED IN CONSTRUCTION
AND INFRASTRUCTURE.

Image via Carbon Engineering

2022 saw the first airlines get involved in working with JetBlue and Twelve with Alaska
the carbon capture space; for example, Air Airlines.
Canada, United and easyJet now see it as part Expect further agreements like this to be
of their net-zero strategies. signed over the coming months.
With carbon capture being discussed much Finally, we predict that aviation companies will
more in the media and with the US Inflation start to integrate carbon capture into their
Reduction Act making it more mainstream, physical infrastructure.
we’ll see more examples of this in 2023.
One example of that is the runway being built
This will take a number of different forms. by Indianapolis Airport.
Some will team up with direct air capture With the concrete provided by Canadian
(DAC) companies like Carbon Engineering and carbon capture company Carbon Cure, the
1PointFive as an alternative or supplement to runway will take out the equivalent CO2 of
carbon offsetting. planting 1.2 million trees.
Those two organisations are working with a In addition to CO2-absorbing concrete, 2023
consortium of aviation companies, which has could be the year when an airport retrofits its
involved the purchase of 400,000 tonnes of cooling towers to become carbon-capturing
carbon removal credits. units. Both Noya In the US and NeoCarbon in
Germany have developed technology to make
Then 2022 saw companies like Air Company
that possible.
and Twelve ink deals with airlines for the
eventual production of SAF made from Want to know more? Take a look at our carbon
captured CO2. Among others, Air Company is capture power list.

January 2023 17
8
8
THE YEAR OF E-FUELS

WITH CONCERNS MOUNTING

ABOUT FEEDSTOCK
AVAILABILITY AND THE COST OF
BIOFUELS, EXPECT TO SEE AN
ACCELERATION OF E-FUEL
DEVELOPMENT.
Right now, almost all Sustainable Aviation
Fuel is a biofuel made out of feedstocks like
waste cooking oil or agricultural material. But
long term, the industry is placing a lot of bets
on so-called E-Fuels, made from renewable
energy sources.
E-Fuels (or power to liquid fuels), in theory,
aren’t restricted by limitations of feedstock
quantities. And by using renewable energy,
they are also cleaner.
However, one of the biggest issues around
E-Fuels is that as things stand today, their
production would require a huge amount of
power.
A paper by Ben James and Craig Douglas of
World Fund estimated that replacing 8% of
European aviation fuel in 2040 with E-Fuels
would use the equivalent of “the entire
electricity consumption of Sweden or the
Netherlands.”
As a result, expect to see a number of players
in 2023 try to resolve what would otherwise
be an E-Fuel dealbreaker.
One example is the Swiss company Synhelion,
which is working with the Lufthansa Group.
The company uses solar fuel cells in E-Fuel
production, without needing to produce
electricity first. Image via Air Company
Similarly, there are companies that seek to
bypass the conventional, almost 100-year-old Meanwhile, Air Company, which is working
Fischer-Tropsch method of making synthetic with JetBlue, says it has turned a multi-stage
fuels. process (the case with Fischer-Tropsch) into a
Prometheus Fuels, for example, seeks to single-step process.
create thousands of modular E-Fuel production E-Fuel companies to look out for in 2023 are
units, where the fuel is made via an ethanol- Air Company, Dimensional Energy, Prometheus
based pathway. Fuels, Synhelion, Twelve.

January 2023 19
9
9
THE YEAR OF SUSTAINABILITY LABELS

FLIGHT SEARCH ENGINES

ALREADY PROVIDE CO2
FIGURES. THE NEXT STEP WILL
BE THE LAUNCH OF
EASY-TO-UNDERSTAND
ENVIRONMENTAL LABELS FOR
FLIGHTS, ALLOWING
CONSUMERS TO MAKE MORE
SUSTAINABLE CHOICES.

When booking hotels, you are often shown

how ‘sustainable’ a property is. For example,
booking.com has its ‘travel sustainable’ badge.’
But while flight search engines like Google
and Skyscanner show CO2 emissions for a
given route, there is still a lack of easy-to-
understand labels telling a passenger that a
flight on (say) a newer A321LR is less carbon
intensive than on an old A340.
We believe that this will change in 2023. In
fact, EASA has been working on a consumer-
friendly labelling scheme.
EASA found that three-quarters of passengers
would welcome a kind of ‘environmental label’,
that’s easy to understand.
As a result, EASA is looking at three different
labels - a flight label, an airline label and an
aircraft label.
Project lead Kai Bauer has published a
presentation where the concept seems to
follow the easy-to-understand energy labels
you see when buying white goods.
It’s worth mentioning that regional airline
flybe did this fifteen years ago when it put an
‘eco label’ on its aircraft (see above image).
With the evidence being that the travelling
public wants to make more sustainable
choices, except more of this.
At the same time, 2023 will see a green rating
for airline suppliers, such as catering, amenity
kits and blankets.
This comes as industry body APEX/IFSA
announced that this year it would be launching
a green rating scheme.
January 2023 21
 1
Image via The Points Guy
10
THE YEAR OF IN-CABIN SUSTAINABILITY

THE TREND OF SINGLE-USE

PLASTICS BEING PHASED OUT
OF AIRLINE CABINS WILL
CONTINUE. IN CABIN
SUSTAINABILITY AS A WHOLE
WILL GROW IN IMPORTANCE.

A passenger can’t tell the difference between

a flight operated with Sustainable Aviation
Fuel (SAF), or normal fuels. But s/he does
notice what goes on in the cabin.
When an airline like Alaska Airlines substitutes
plastic bottles for boxed water, it’s
immediately visible.
As a result, in-cabin sustainability is the
headline that trails other environmental
initiatives. It signposts that there is more
going on in other areas.
In 2023 we expect to see more of a focus on
this area.
This comes as different countries are
penalising the use of single-use plastics.
For example, France has initiated what’s been
called a “fast food revolution” by banning
single-use plastic restaurant tableware.
Airlines will follow suit and increasingly phase
out single-use plastics. Also, expect to see
sustainability become a big factor in amenity
kits, an area we covered in an article in the
Autumn.
Overall this trend will be given a boost by the
introduction of the APEX/IFSA green supplier
rating, which we mentioned in the previous
section.
The other element of in-flight sustainability
relates to airline seats. This was a topic
covered in the Sustainability in the Air podcast
when SimpliFlying CEO Shashank Nigam spoke
to Dr Mark Hiller, the CEO of Recaro Aircraft
Seating.
Lighter seats can save CO2, and materials
such as E-Leather are increasingly being used
in their manufacture.

January 2023 23
1
11
THE YEAR OF COOLING CREDITS

WE’LL BE HEARING A LOT MORE ABOUT SOLAR GEO-ENGINEERING

IN 2023. FOR THE FIRST TIME, THERE IS NOW A START-UP
WANTING TO SELL ‘COOLING CREDITS’ TO AIRLINES.
We’ve added this final trend as a wild card. One start-up has already carried out trials
where sulphur particles were released into the
It relates to solar geo-engineering. The radical
atmosphere from a balloon in Mexico.
idea is that as the planet heats, and we are no
Make Sunsets, which has almost $1 million
closer to 1.5 degrees, we’ll have to undertake
in seed funding, intends to carry out further
what are called “climate interventions.”
flights and is selling so-called “cooling
This would most likely involve releasing credits,”
particles in the atmosphere that then reflect
Costing $10, each credit will allow for
sunlight.
the release of a gram of particles into the
To say that this topic is controversial is almost atmosphere, which the company says is
an understatement. enough to offset the warming effect of a ton
of carbon a year.
Nevertheless, Michael Campos of Energy
Impact Partners sees it as evolving from an We’re aware that Make Sunsets is interested
idea that raises serious concerns to one that’s in working with airlines and selling them
starting to gain traction. credits.
Indeed, human intervention in the climate is Whether carriers find this idea too
already happening right now. For example, in controversial and early stage or not, we’ll be
2021, Forbes reported that the UAE Emirate hearing more about solar geo-engineering
of Dubai was using “laser drones to shock in 2023. Make Sunsets also won’t be the
rainwater out of the sky.” last startup like this offering these kinds of
credits.
January 2023 25
26 Ten Sustainable Aviation Trends for 2023