Such is the fundamental importance of aviation tackling its emissions that it has become commonplace for decarbonisation to dominate the agenda of ICAO’s triennial gatherings.

But the 42nd ICAO Assembly, held in Montreal over two weeks and concluding in early October, saw ­sustainability take something of a back seat to ­security, safety and geopolitical issues.

That perhaps says much about the agreements that have already been reached within ICAO, including the Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation (CORSIA) and the long-term global aspirational goal (LTAG) for aviation to reach net-zero emissions by 2050.

“For the last four assemblies, it’s really been ­focused on climate change and sustainability,” says Haldane Dodd, executive director of cross-aviation industry grouping the Air Transport Action Group.

“We had CORSIA agreed in 2016, we had the long-term goal agreed in 2022. Those have all been adopted,” he adds. “We want to make sure they don’t get watered down in an assembly like this or that we don’t see any sign from governments of pulling away from that.

“And we didn’t. In fact, we saw a lot of support for the work ICAO has been doing, both on the policy framework vision-side as well as the capacity building and assistance to states to make sure they were ready to face these big challenges.”

Notably, ICAO in its post-assembly communications on sustainable development highlighted ­“unprecedented unity”, noting that all member states supported environmental resolutions without any reservations for the first time.

Both Dodd and Asia-Pacific Airlines Association director general Subhas Menon flag the ­significance of China’s approach, given it has previously ­expressed reservations related to the LTAG and CORSIA resolutions.

“They agreed to discuss with ICAO states on ­implementing CORSIA as well as the long-term ­aspirational goal,” says Menon. “They have become very much more collaborative than they were in the past. So that was a very important development, with China being such a big market.”

Menon also took encouragement from the ICAO Assembly as a whole. “There was a reaffirmation of the long-term aspirational goal, recognition that production of SAF [sustainable aviation fuel] is still not enough, and that governments will have to come up with enabling policies, as well as ensuring that the other elements of the roadmap – like technology – should also be ramped up. And [there was] a recognition that supply chain problems are also a drag when it comes to environmental goals.

“We left in a good position because China joined the party and there was recognition of some of the problems we are facing as an industry.”

However, Aoife O’Leary, founder and chief ­executive of environmental NGO Opportunity Green – which has a focus on sectors where emissions are not yet coming down – was less impressed. “The lack of acknowledgement of climate reality I found really discordant,” she says. “It’s very ‘well we have CORSIA so we couldn’t possibly push it or do anything else’, meanwhile talking down any efforts coming from anywhere else.”

Unsurprisingly, given its importance to achieving net-zero and the challenges around ramping up production, SAF remains a key concern within the industry – particularly next generation SAF solutions. States had in November 2023 at ICAO’s third Alternative Aviation Fuels meeting agreed a framework targeting a 5% reduction in emissions from aviation by 2030, with this endorsed at the assembly.

However, IATA says that while it expects SAF ­production to double this year, that will still account for less than 1% of aviation fuel. “We’re disappointed at the progress that has been made in relation to the production of SAF. It’s not where we need it to be,” IATA director general Willie Walsh said ahead of the assembly.

“The demand exists, and I think the evidence for that is the number of airlines who have entered into agreements for the future purchase of SAF. But we need to see greater production.”

One fresh development was the launch of the Finvest ETAF portal on the eve of the assembly. This is an initiative between ICAO and the International Renewable Energy Agency aimed at accelerating production of SAF by helping connect project developers with potential financers.

“The message I had for the assembly… is the urgency of setting the right policy environment for us to do the scale-up in an expedited way,” Dodd says. “I’m not massively concerned about the 2030 timeframe. My concern is more for the 2030-2050 timeframe. That scale-up is going to have to be really steep in terms of SAF supply, so the next five years are really crucial to make sure you’ve got the right policies in place to set the trajectory for where we need to get to in 2050.”

MANDATES INTRODUCED

This year has seen the start of mandates in both the EU and the UK. This has begun with a 2% SAF requirement of total fuel this year, with the threshold levels in both schemes rising – and ­crucially including initial requirements around SAF that is not produced from hydro-processed esters and fatty acids (HEFA), such as used cooking oil.

“This has led to a significant increase in fuel costs for airline operations in the EU and in the UK, but is not translated into a significant increase in the production of SAF,” complains Walsh.

IAG group sustainability officer Jonathon ­Counsell says: “We’re always very clear that ­mandates on their own will not deliver SAF investment. They ­create a demand signal, but you will not get ­investment on mandates alone. You do need ­complementary policy initiatives.”

South Korea in September announced the introduction of SAF requirements, which will make it mandatory for 1% of fuel on international flights to be SAF from 2027, rising to 3-5% in 2030. It is one of several countries in the region that have outlined SAF requirements. Menon though notes that such policies in Asia are “more about targets and governments coming up with the policies to provide the necessary SAF”.

INCENTIVE SCHEMES

Seoul’s SAF Blending Mandate Roadmap, for example, includes the creation of an industry-wide SAF Alliance to support development, as well as incentives and tax credits.

“We are seeing a lot more of that happening in the Asia-Pacific region,” says Menon.

CORSIA was one of the first major sustainability initiatives developed through ICAO, a global offsetting scheme agreed in the standoff when the EU pushed to include international aviation within its Emissions Trading System (ETS). When CORSIA was agreed, the EU limited the scope of aviation within its scheme to intra-European Economic Areas flights only.

Airline bodies have backed CORSIA as a means of avoiding a “patchwork” of regional schemes, but have flagged a lack of availability of CORSIA eligible emissions units (EEUs). IATA led the call for governments to issue letters of authorisation to help airlines access EEUs. IATA forecasts airlines will require between 146 and 236 million EEUs during CORSIA’s first phase from 2024-2026, but the current supply is limited to the 15.8 million credits made available by Guyana.

Environmental groups though criticise the ­effectiveness of CORSIA, which remains voluntary until 2027. Transport & Environment (T&E) and Carbon Market Watch issued analysis estimating that CORSIA will offset only 26% of EU aviation’s CO2 emissions by 2035 – because it is largely focused on aviation growth.

The effectiveness of CORSIA will come under renewed focus as the EU next year considers whether to extend the scope of aviation within its ETS to ­cover fights operating beyond Europe.

T&E and Carbon Market Watch argue that relying on CORSIA and not extending the EU ETS will cost Europe billions in lost revenues. Carbon Market Watch says its analysis shows a scope extension from 2027 could raise an extra €147 billion ($170 billion) by 2040.

ICAO says 130 states are now participating in ­CORSIA. However, that does not include key ­markets such as Brazil, China, India and Russia. And while there are more positive noises from China on ­CORSIA, there is unpredictability around the US ­approach under the Trump Administration.

Opportunity Green’s O’Leary questions whether the USA will actually implement CORSIA. “Under Trump I can’t imagine that scenario. For all the lobbying powers of airlines, I don’t think they are going to manage to get that through the US.” She says this adds to the reasons the EU should expand the scope of its ETS.

“Even though we have been talking about climate, which has been a public issue for at least 10 years, we haven’t done anything about aviation other than within Europe,” she says. “I’m hopeful that this time we might actually put international flights in the ETS. That is about a billion tonnes of CO2 a year, so a huge amount of emissions that you immediately start to regulate.”

Premium travel is also under the microscope after a group of countries, including Barbados, France and Kenya in 2023 established the Global Solidarity Levies Task Force (GSLTF). The task force has said it will conclude its work at November’s COP30 event in Belem, Brazil, with an announcement by its co-chairs on “options for implementing progressive international levies”.

US transportation secretary Sean Duffy, in a speech at the assembly, said that airspace was not something “to be monetised or leveraged as an economic cudgel”, adding that “new taxes and illegitimate user charges are not only at odds with ICAO principles” but would open up a domino effect of “disproportionate, unjust, or duplicative economic costs”.

These comments appear primarily directed at the GSLTF, opposition to which the USA outlined in a working paper submitted at the assembly – and which did not mention CORSIA.

Crucially, efforts to decarbonise aviation are set against political shifts in the net-zero debate, notably in the USA, whose Inflation Reduction Act policies have been lauded within the industry as a catalyst for sustainable aviation investment.

“There are some headwinds in this space and they are not just coming from governments,” says Dodd. “They are also coming from the traditional energy industry pulling back on their ­climate ­commitments. Some of the finance institutions have been pulling back on things they have been talking about on sustainability.

“We look at it from a fundamental perspective and that hasn’t changed. We know the science is telling us the climate is changing. We know as an industry we are going to continue to grow. So we need to have a response to that.”

ONGOING CONCERN

IAG’s Counsell adds: “The underlying problem doesn’t go away. This is not like a business fad. And I think it is very clear to us as a business that we will continue to address this problem. Politics is politics, it’s cyclical and we’ll ride through it. But you can’t deny the issue still needs to be resolved.”

While O’Leary is “pretty concerned” at the current political direction, she also believes these shifts are cyclical – pointing to it only being a few years since the Green Deal was the centrepiece of the European Commission legislative programme.

“For the climate, the science doesn’t change. So the longer we leave it, the worse it is. We are progressing – slowly, but surely. But we do need to speed it up,” she says. “I remain hopeful this is a phase and not a complete turn. But I guess that remains to be seen.”

How Oneworld-led initiative will fuel SAF advance

Moves led by Oneworld partners to establish an investment fund intended to kickstart development of next generation sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) signal that demand is there among airlines, executives say.

In September, Alaska Airlines and American Airlines announced they were cornerstone investors in the new fund, which is also supported by their Oneworld partners Cathay Pacific, IAG and Japan Airlines, plus Star Alliance member Singapore Airlines.

An initial $150 million allocation is being managed by Breakthrough Energy Ventures (BEV), a fund founded by Bill Gates and other business leaders to support less-pollutive energy technologies.

“[The initiative is about] making sure the next generations of technology are funded and available,” explains Oneworld director of sustainability and innovation Matt Ridley.

“This is an area Breakthrough has got 10 years’ experience of actually bringing technologies out of the university environment and then scaling them up,” he says. The airlines have already worked with BEV investments like propulsion developer ZeroAvia and SAF producer LanzaJet.

IAG group sustainability officer Jonathon Counsell points to the importance of tackling the longer-term supply of next-generation SAF, particularly given the feedstock limitations of first generation (1G) HEFA-based fuels.

“When we look out to 2050, industry targets are for around 70% SAF. It’s quite clear to us that only a relatively small proportion of that will come from 1G [SAF]. Therefore, you really do need to start catalysing development of 2G and 3G [SAF]. There’s no production of either of those anywhere today.”

Ridley adds: “I think it has already sent a message that airlines are serious about SAF, airlines are serious about backing the entrepreneurs and technologies that will bring this technology forwards. There are going to be others that join over the next few months… from Oneworld and from other areas.

“We’ve done the hard work putting the fund together, working on how it will work and what it will invest in. But this was never meant to be constrained to just Oneworld airlines – and I think Singapore Airlines joining really early on is testament to that.”