The airline industry, one of our major customers, emits 2-4% of the world’s carbon dioxide through the operation of aircraft and ground support vehicles at airports. This is the second largest emission in the transportation sector after automobiles, and this gap is expected to narrow in the future as automobiles become more electrically powered and zero-emission. As countries around the world commit to achieving carbon neutrality by 2050, the airline industry is naturally stepping up its efforts in a variety of ways: the latest report adopted by ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organization) in February 2022 states that by 2050, the aviation industry will reduce its carbon dioxide emissions up to 55% from fuel and clean energy sources, up to 21% from aircraft innovations, and up to 11% from operational improvements. As expected, the direct and most significant contributor to emissions reductions will be fuel, and in recent years there has been progress in the development and use of biofuels called SAF (Sustainable Aviation Fuel), and currently up to 50% of aviation fuel is allowed to be blended with SAF for flight. The impact of the Corona pandemic on the aviation industry was enormous, but even so, companies continue to invest in the development and procurement of SAF fuel and are committed to improving environmental issues over the medium to long term. We acknowledge it as an important issue, how we can support such efforts of the aviation industry. Therefore, we are thinking from the perspective of travelers who fly. For companies whose employees’ use airlines for business trips or transport goods (raw materials and products), and for the environmentally conscious traveler, it is of great interest to know which airline or flight to choose to reduce emissions. This is especially important for companies that are required to include supply chain emissions in their reduction targets and performance reports. However, at this time, travel agents and online booking sites where passengers book and purchase airline seats are not capable of informing which flights are more environmentally friendly. Through the latest travel distribution technology (NDC: New Distribution Capability) provided by our affiliate Vertail Technologies (www.verteil.co.jp), we would like to provide information that allows users to determine which airline’s flight is better in terms of environmental measures. We would like to provide information that allows passengers to determine which airline’s flights are superior in terms of environmental preservation. This is still under consideration, but we would like to establish a system where such information can be obtained from the reservation site so that consumers do not feel guilty about air travel, but can protect the global environment by choosing an airline with superior environmental measures.
Tetsuya Joko
Representative Director