Airbus teams up with airlines to explore carbon removal solutions
Aircraft manufacturing giant Airbus has joined forces with with more than half a dozen airlines, including Air Canada, Air France-KLM, easyJet, International Airlines Group, LATAM Airlines Group, Lufthansa Group and Virgin Atlantic to sign letters of intent to explore the future supply of carbon removal credits from direct air carbon capture technology.
With stakeholders across the sector focused on decarbonising aviation, Direct Air Carbon Capture and Storage (DACCS) is a high-potential technology that involves filtering and removing CO2 emissions directly from the air using high powered fans. This CO2 is then safely and permanently stored in geological reservoirs. Given aviation cannot capture CO2 emissions released into the atmosphere at source DACCS would allow the aviation sector to extract the equivalent amount of emissions from its operations directly from atmospheric air.
Julie Kitcher, Executive Vice President Communications and Corporate Affairs, Airbus, said: “We are already seeing strong interest from airlines to explore affordable and scalable carbon removals.” She added that these first letters of intent mark a “concrete step towards the use of this promising technology.”
Meanwhile, Air Canada’s Senior Director, Environmental Affairs at Air Canada, added: “While we are in the early days of a long journey and much remains to be done, this technology is one of the main important levers that will be needed, along with many others, including SAF and increasingly efficient and new technology aircraft, to decarbonise the aviation industry.”
As part of the agreements, the airlines involved have committed to engage in negotiations on the possible pre-purchase of verified and durable carbon removal credits starting in 2025 through to 2028. The carbon removal credits will be issued by Airbus’ partner 1PointFive, with the agreement between the two companies including the pre-purchase of 400,000 tonnes of carbon removal credits to be delivered over four years.
Jane Ashton, easyJet’s Director of Sustainability said: “Direct air capture is a nascent technology with a huge potential, so we are very pleased to be part of this important initiative. We believe that carbon removal solutions will be an essential element of our pathway to net zero, complementing other components and helping us to neutralise residual emissions in the future.”
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), carbon removal is required to help the world go beyond climate mitigation and to support the achievement of net-zero targets. In addition, according to the Air Transport Action Group’s (ATAG’s) Waypoint 2050 report, offsets (mainly in the form of carbon removals) will be needed between 6% and 8% – to make up any remaining shortfalls in emissions above the goal.