Full Video: Delta, Air France-KLM and McKinsey Talk Sustainability

25.08.2023 - 14:43 / skift.com / Delta Air Lines / Sean Oneill / Air France / Tom Lowry / Amelia Deluca

Can airlines reduce the total hydrocarbons they burn? Aviation plays a role in the climate emergency, contributing an estimated 3 percent of the world’s carbon emissions a year.

A few top airline industry leaders spotlighted promising ways for aviation to reduce its carbon emissions in an on-stage conversation on November 16 at Skift Aviation Forum 2022 in Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas. The leaders spoke with Skift Editor-in-Chief Tom Lowry.

Switching aircraft to more fuel-efficient planes is one lever to pull, said Marion N. Chivot-Legris, head of sustainability North America at Air France-KLM.

Pursuing alternative fuels, plus hydrogen or electric power, are other steps, said Amelia DeLuca, vice president of sustainability, Delta Air Lines.

Some business travelers, however, would like solutions to come faster, said Danielle Bozarth, senior partner at McKinsey & Company. Consultancies such as McKinsey and corporations such as Microsoft have been examining their travel-related carbon impacts more closely in the past few years.

“We have a commitment to reduce each of our consultants’ emissions footprint by 30 percent by 2025,” Bozarth said about McKinsey. (Side note: A recent report by Skift Research, in partnership with McKinsey & Company, provided four strategies for travel companies to put net-zero words into action.)

Watch this on-stage conversation for the full color — or read a transcript of it — below.

Tom Lowry: Danielle, Amelia, and Marion, I hope in the next 25 minutes or so that we can find a solution to the sustainability problem.

Amelia DeLuca: I’m certain we will.

Lowry: Seriously, I think our discussion is very timely given what we’ve seen and some headlines out of COP27 in the last week or so. And I’m really interested in getting your insights for what I personally think is one of the most important sessions at the forum. So, welcome. Before I get going, I just want to remind people that you can ask questions in chat in the app and online, and that we will have a poll with this session. So, please fill it out. I’m going to give you the results of that in a couple of minutes.

Marion, let’s start with you. So, Air France-KLM put out its first climate report in 2008, so 14 years ago. So, that’s a long time ago. And we’ve seen a lot of messaging and intent over that time, but I feel like just from what we’ve covered at Skift, that there was an inflection point during the pandemic, maybe a catalyst. So, can you explain a little bit about what we’re seeing now in terms of maybe some momentum on sustainability?

Marion N. Chivot-Legris for Air France-KLM: Sure. Actually we started our momentum on sustainability 2003, with the nature of the UN Global Compact, the United Nations. It’s basically a