 What kind of world do I want to live in? I think about this question a lot. Our generation and for specifically my group of people, which is refugees, the circumstances, any vision of the future that we have. You're trying to rebuild, you're trying to make a future for yourself, and then the climate-related is a really good thing. It's not about how it's affecting you now, it's about how it's affecting you your entire life. The first step to understand is that we're all a part of it. None of us are going to be left out. We're at a stage where if we don't, I think there won't be very much left. There are generations that will never see certain things that we grew up seeing in real life. Have to start treating this like the emergency it is to achieve the 17 Sustainable Development Goals. We have to go from an intention to a serious commitment. Business leaders really need to rethink how they conduct their business and their best in creating systems that are climate-friendly. The action I would like to see is accountability. Structures being put in place where countries aren't just asked to do something, but they're kept accountable to the decisions that they make. There has to be that strong collaboration between government, between corporations, between youth activists to drag change forward. The world I would want to live in is a world where imagining the future is not a privilege. I want to live in a world where people do not give up on hope. Hope that a positive change is possible. The fact that you're listening today means that you are willing to make a change. Welcome to this press conference at the World Economic Forum's Sustainable Development Impact Summit. We're very pleased that you're joining us, and we thank you for joining us live online right now as we take off towards aviation decarbonisation. My name is Katie Clift. I'm from the World Economic Forum, and I'm very pleased to be moderating this press conference today. And I'm very pleased to be joined by a panel of experts and representatives from airlines, airports and fuel suppliers who are calling for sustainable aviation fuel by 2030. But what do we need to get our flights greener? Well, let's find out. Please join with me in welcoming our panel today. We have Lauren Upink, who's from the World Economic Forum, the head of aviation travel and tourism. We have Anna Mascolo, the president of global aviation at Shell. John Holland Kay, the CEO of Heathrow. Jonathan Council, who's from the International Airlines Group, the group head of sustainability. And we should have another guest joining us very shortly, Sean Doyle, who is the CEO of British Airways. Funnily enough, he is being held up at the airport as we speak. So we hope to see him later on the panel, but we have a slight delay at the moment. So thank you to our panelists for being here with us right now. And thank you for being here live. We do welcome you to put your questions to our panelists during this press conference. If you are here with us, we have a Q&A function where you can throw your questions in as we move along and hear the opening remarks from our panelists. We do welcome you to put those through, and we will get through as many as we can in the next 30 minutes. So we welcome you to pop those in, and our team will get to those questions from the floor. But let's turn to our panel. We'll start with you, Lauren. And the forum has just released the Clean Sky's Ambition Statement. It's just come out now. Tell us a little bit about it. Absolutely. So firstly, I'd like to share what the Clean Sky is for tomorrow coalition is. It's a group of actors across the aviation ecosystem who are working together to advance the mission of decarbonizing aviation with an immediate focus at this point on accelerating the supply and use of sustainable aviation fuels. So sustainable aviation fuels or SAF is the most promising option at this point to reduce aviation industry's carbon emissions in the near term. But commercial production of these fuels make up at this point only or less than 0.1% of jet fuel demand. So if we want to meet net zero by 2050, we need to scale this to at least 2% by 2025 and 10% by 2030. And the challenge is that SAF is far more expensive than conventional jet fuel today. And producers and carriers are both unable to alone carry the initial cost burden. So of investing in these technologies to a point where they become, where they scale and become competitive with existing fossil fuel derived options. So what this Ambition Statement demonstrates and we're really excited today to announce that is that together these 60 actors are willing to move forward in concert, sharing responsibility and distributing that cost burden. And importantly, the signatories include not just colleagues and corporations from the traditional aviation environments such as airports, airlines and fuel producers, but also corporate travel buyers. So we're talking banks, professional service firms, accounting firms. Those who are recognizing that their role as actors that depend on aviation is crucial to this challenge too. And they too can take the opportunity to distribute the cost. And so this statement shows that carriers and corporations are willing to buy these fuels and pay the premiums. There is a green premium for these fuels. And then in doing so help to bring down those costs for longer term. But to do that, we need to make sure that we can make those fuels become readily available at scale. So this statement also comes at a time when we're seeing exciting movements and policies, which are also important to this topic. They need to work hand in hand with demand signals like this one. We saw the White House two weeks ago announced their commitment to reducing emissions from aviation by 20% by 2030. The EU in July announced a blending mandate of 5% SAF by 2030 for all flights departing from the EU. And we saw airlines for America, for example, committing to procure as much as 3 billion gallons of SAF by 2030. So these are major steps forward. And our panellists today, I'm sure, will share much more about what each of them are doing to move us towards this goal of 10% SAF by 2030. But it is a truly global sector and we require global efforts and policy certainty not just from these markets like the US and EU will be critical as we move forward. So we will continue as the coalition to work with governments, to work with all the actors across the value chain to make sure that this ambition is turned into action. And we look forward to seeing some of those commitments over the next couple of months as we lead up to COP26. Fantastic. Thank you, Lauren. Very important emphasis there on the multistakeholders that are needed to make this happen and very important emphasis on obviously today being a first step and an important step in seeing this happen by 2030. Jonathan, let's move to you and talk about the role of SAF in your decarbonisation plans. Can you talk us through any specific initiatives that you're progressing? Yeah, thank you, Katie. And good afternoon. It's great to join you on this important occasion. And yes, at IG, we believe that progressing the development and commercial deployment of SAF is crucial to decarbonising the aviation industry. We at IAG and One World very happy to support this Clean Skies for Tomorrow ambition in recognising the critical role that SAF will play in meeting our near-term objectives as well as our long-term decarbonisation targets. In April this year, IAG, we also committed to 10% of SAF by 2030, whereby we'll be deploying 1 million tonnes of SAF by 2030, saving 2 million tonnes of CO2, which is equivalent to taking 2 million cars off the roads every year. But essentially, we need plants to produce this SAF and we need appropriate policy support to get those plants built. We welcome the progress that we've made. We've seen in the last few months, particularly in the US, the EU and the UK, for instance, through the Jet Zero Council, but we will need additional policy support to attract the necessary investment to get these first plants built. That's absolutely critical. But let me just talk about some of the specifics in terms of what we're doing at IAG and British Airways to try and make SAF a reality. First of all, IAG, we've committed to investing $400 million in the next 20 years into the production of SAF. We have two flagship projects, so we're going to build Europe's first waste to jet fuel plant here in the UK with our technology partner, Velocis. And what we're doing there is we're taking 500,000 tonnes of waste that would otherwise end up in landfill and we're going to convert that into jet fuel, sustainable jet fuel. Secondly, we're investing in a plant in the US with our partner, Lanza Jet. And so that will start supplying fuel at the back end of next year, supporting SAF on our flights from the United States. And then just two weeks ago, one of our airlines, British Airways, announced that with its partner, British Petroleum BP, a commitment to supply all flights from Heathrow Airport, Gatwick Airport and London City Airport to the upcoming COP26 event for the duration of that event, saving 80% of the CO2 on those flights. And at the same time, VA had now also provided facilities whereby all of our customers can reduce their emissions through investing in sustainable aviation fuels. So lots happening. Many congratulations on this import. We are very proud to support and we believe represents a really important milestone in making flying sustainable. Thank you for being here on the panel and for your opening remarks. Hannah, we heard there right from Jonathan about the need for support. And you know, we know that that airlines will have a key role to play here. They won't be able to do it on their own. So tell us about the role that fuel companies and others will have to play in terms of driving this SAF usage. Yeah, no, thanks, everybody. And indeed, I think this is a complex area. So let me first say, I'm really excited to be part of this announcement as Shell and Shell Aviation. And I'll talk about a little bit about what Shell is doing in general, but also what Shell Aviation is doing more specifically. I think for us decarbonization is right left and center in our strategy. We want to be a zero energy company by 2050 or sooner. That really means not only reducing the emissions from our own production facilities, but also the what we call scope three emissions. So the emissions from our customers. Why this is important? Because then we have a keen interest for our customers to use lower carbon fuels and to work with our customers in sectors that are specifically hard to abate, like aviation to decarbonize. And we have also communicated that we will lower the production of our traditional fuels by 55% by 2030 and work on a much more constant high value footprint for our energy and chemical parks. Now, when it comes to aviation, because it's a hard to abate sector, I think what does it mean? These sectors tend to have high barriers when it comes to decarbonization, whether it comes to technologies, to CAPEX investment or the regulatory framework. And we believe that as Shell Aviation and as Shell, we've been in industry for more than 100 years. And we have the size and the scale to be able to put the supply and the demand together and work with governments to find the right policies. Or sometimes I talk about it is to make the rules of the games clear for players to move in the right direction. Now, as Shell, we want to play our part. And as such, we have just announced on Monday our aim to produce 2 million tons of SAF by 2025 by year. That's 10 times more than what it is produced in 2020. So I think really trying to step up and the production currently is coming from a few players. So really trying to step up the production by 2025. And then again, we aim to subscribe to the ambitions to have at least 10% of our sales to be SAF by 2030. To back this up a little bit more concretely, we have again just announced last week our final investment decisions for a biofuel plant in the Netherlands. One of the many projects that we are looking into and one of the many technologies that we have invested when it comes to SAF. So what Jonathan was saying, we've invested also in land to jet. We have analogies of called ISQA when it comes to waste to jet. And also we're looking into power to liquids. So I think all of this technology we will need to come on board to help us decarbonize the industry. And look forward to work with the other players in the industry to make it happen. Fantastic to hear your passion and very important to highlight there the role of technology and also many, many things that we'll need to come into play to make this happen. John, moving to you, we know that SAF fuel production needs to increase. Then we need to get it onto the plane through the role of airports and the role that you're going to play in terms of to make this happen. John, I have to take a classic turn that you are on mute, I'm sorry. I think you're muted and now you're back on mute, John. Sorry. Is that working now? Take it away. I was just going to say that Sean is delayed at a not a Heathrow airport. But why are we doing this is because climate change is an existential threat to our sector, not just to the world. And we've got to play our part in tackling it if we're going to reach net zero emissions by 2050 as a community. And we need to protect the benefits of aviation in a world without carbon. Now, SAF is the most promising technology here. It exists. It's been around for over 70 years. It just needs to be scaled. The option of this is that it is a drop in fuel with kerosene. You can go in the same pipelines and the same planes as happened today. And the faster we can scale up SAF, the faster we can decarbonize aviation. And one of the great things about that is that it means that an airport like Heathrow can scale up supply of aviation fuels, even if the plane is going to an airport that doesn't have a supply of vehicles. And that means that we can start the transition very quickly. And that's a big advantage compared to some of the other technologies that we need to pursue, such as electric for short haul or liquid hydrogen for short and medium haul, which require technology of both airport, both ends of the route. Of course, requires a huge amount of investment within the airport to make that possible. So SAF is a fantastic opportunity. What it does, though, of course, is put the pressure on the energy suppliers to scale up their side of the supply chain. And that's why it's so important that we all work together to get the right policies in place that allow the massive investment that is needed. Now, what we've been doing working together is, first of all, before the start of COVID, the UK aviation sector, including the entire supply chain, committed to net zero emissions by 2050 and published a plan to do it. And one of the parts of that plan was to set up the Jet Zero Council, which was launched by Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, early last year, with the vision of having guilt-free transatlantic flight within a generation. And Anna and Jonathan and I are all actively involved in that, as are the investors, the manufacturers, and all the leading players within the supply chain. And the plan that we're coming up with is looking at two parts. First of all, sustainable aviation fuels and secondly, technology changes, changing the planes to allow hydrogen and electric. But those are some years away before they really come in, in some scales. So the focus is on SAF. And there are two things that we need to stimulate the massive investment that's needed in SAF. And both of these are things that the UK government is now consulting on. The first is the mandate that we've heard about, at least 10 per cent by 2050. That sends a demand signal to the suppliers to start putting the investment in. And the second is a price stability mechanism, which will ensure that they can get a good return, a fair return on the investment they're making. And this is not just happening in the UK, it's happening internationally. And we'll see that in the States where airlines have voluntarily made commitments to over 10 per cent sustainable aviation fuels by 2030 and the US government is supporting them with a blender's credit, which equalises the price between kerosene and SAF. And those are the kind of measures which are really stimulating supply of SAF at scale in the US market. And what's fantastic to see now is that with these policies coming into place, countries are competing for investment in SAFs in their countries. So we're seeing Canada and the US and the Netherlands all trying to attract this new investment. And that's the kind of thing we need. And what we are seeing from investors is that if they can see a mandate in place and a price stability mechanism, then they can invest the hundreds of billions of dollars that are going to be needed to decarbonise sustainable aviation fuel. And so we have the technology, we have the funding, we just need the policy support in place. And that's what things like the Jet Zero Council are helping to make happen. Fantastic. Thank you to all of our panel members for your opening remarks. This is a very big topic. We have, we are about halfway through our press conference. We have about 15 minutes left. And I would like to remind those who are tuning in live with us and have access to the chat Q&A to if you do have a question for any of our panellists that you are able to put through your question, our team will pick that up and we'll ask as many as we can in the next few minutes that we have remaining for this press conference. We do have a question from GreenAir Online from Chris and we'll stay with this policy question because I think it's quite important to sort of elaborate a little bit and wrap this up where we can. We've talked about the EU, we've talked about the US policies. Are those policies sufficient to achieve the volumes needed for the 10% target and what other policies are needed in your view? Maybe Jonathan, I'll come to you first and then we'll move to the other panellists. For sure, and as John has said, policy support is absolutely the enabler to get these plants built. And we talk about the three key elements. You need a strong demand signal which is where mandates come in, mandates provide that. Then you need revenue support as we've seen in the development of other renewable industries. So the price stability mechanism that John mentioned. So contracts for difference, for example, which is something we're looking at in the UK. And then the final piece is around the capital risk. A lot of these plants are very capital intense. So you need some support, things like loan guarantees. If you can get those three elements, then you're going to get the investment to get these plants built. I think I would say that the US with the Blender's credit that John mentioned that should be introduced, I think they're probably in the lead in terms of attractiveness for investment. So I think the EU and the UK, we would need to look closely at that to if we want to be able to compete. John, what do you have to add? Is there anything we need in other countries? Anything else new policy to make this happen? I think from a global policy point of view, we need a level playing field. And what we've been trying to do through Clean Skies for Tomorrow is to create a coalition of the willing led by industry to show governments that we want to be included in climate change deals. We may not be included in COP, but we do want to get a commitment to IKO in September next year to net zero emissions. We see COP as being a stepping stone towards that and I was very pleased to see that at the G7 communique, that included a commitment to net zero aviation. And I happened to be at the G7 and got to speak to all the leaders about a minimum 10% sustainable aviation fuels by 2030 and at least 50% by 2050. And there was strong support for that as we've seen now coming through in the EU, UK and US. So that's the core ask. And the good thing about this is it's very democratic. Sustainable aviation fuels can work as well in Europe as they work in India. And it's fantastic to see SpiceJet, one of the leading Indian airlines, signing up to the Clean Skies initiative because they can see that it can work in developing countries. And it's important that the solutions for decarbonising aviation don't just work in wealthy countries such as the Europeans. They have to work for the whole world if we are going to genuinely decarbonise global aviation. Anna, do you have thoughts to add to this policy question? No, I think a lot of it has been said already. So I will end up repeating. What I can say is that there seem to be a perception within the industry, at least at the start, that all of these policies need to align between all the different countries and be all the same. And actually the findings we had through a work we have done with Deloitte interviewing industry executives from over 68 companies is that actually you need for each country to have, even if the incentives are slightly different, but the industry starts to see that the signals are there on demand, supply and investments. And then you're starting to have a snowball effect basically and people step in and take leap of faith in investing in sustainable aviation fuels in the infrastructure that comes with it and then policy will follow and customer will come. So it takes a lot of time to get us started, but I think I really, really see that there is a real momentum at the moment to make a difference. Absolutely. I mean, we're also talking about the fact that 10% SAF, I mean, one of the questions we have coming through is the 10% SAF used by 2030, is it really enough to get us where we'd like to be climate wise? I'll put that question first to you, John. You talked about minimum 10% SAF by 2030. Do you think it's, do you think, yeah? Well, I mean, 10% is a milestone towards a much higher level. I think that 50% is enough to get global aviation to net zero emissions. The work that the UK government has done are confident that that is compatible with the net zero by 2050 legally binding commitments. However, I think that as with many of these things, 50% will become 70% and become 100%. And certainly when I spoke to our Prime Minister about this, that's where his head is at. The critical thing is we really make progress quickly because unless we break the back of this in the next decade, then it'll be, we'll have no chance of meeting those targets for 2050. So this is the decade for transforming the aviation energy supply chain. We have a question about, I guess the challenges in terms of the backlash against flying in recent years. Is switching to sustainable fuels enough or should people cut back on flying? Anna, do you have a take on this question? Yeah, I think the way we look at this is that you need to tackle different measures along the way. We often talk about avoiding reducing enough settings when it comes to delivers to play within the aviation sectors. With avoiding we look at operational efficiencies for us on the ground, but for the airlines industries in disguise and also looking at technologies like hydrogen that are truly net zero. But also there are reductions meant measures that are needed such as sustainable aviation fuels and from a very broad range of technologies. And I do have to stress this because some of the technologies are available today in scalables, but they won't be sufficient. We need more and we did along the way. And this is part of the trend that we were discussing around. It takes time to get things moving. And then the other thing that we do advocate and that you and me and everybody can do today is actually a signal to the industry that we care about sustainability by offsetting our flights through high quality of setting mechanisms. I also think in addition to this that with COVID our habits around flying, especially when it comes even to copper flying, will be different. We will be thinking differently on will we fly to just have a one day meeting somewhere and then come back or is a video call much more easier. So I think we're going to be all a bit more responsible about the way we are going to come back out of COVID in terms of flying. Eliminating flying I think is difficult. I think it's not impossible because we do need to connect people and businesses and actually flying has been a life-saving boat when with COVID moving goods and medicines and for all of us it's been very important to clip the supply chain going. You are absolutely correct on that point and I note that we have five minutes to go. I did say it was a very big topic to cover in 30 minutes and I do want to leave enough time for closing remarks from our panel. We'll start with you, Jonathan, first of all. So what would you like to say in terms of wrapping us up here? We've heard about the Clean Sky's ambition statement. We've heard about policy, we've heard about some of the challenges that will take us through to 2030. Where would you like to leave us today? Yeah, first I'd say the airline industry, the aviation industry is fully committed to achieving its long-term goals. I'm happy to say that back in 2009 we were the first global sector to commit to global carbon reduction targets that was 50% by 2050. We now already have 50% of the industry committing to net zero emissions by 2050 and we're hoping at the upcoming IARTA AGM we'll get the whole airline industry and then the value chain, the supply chain to commit. So again, being the first global sector to commit to net zero emissions by 2050. So these are real signals that we are serious. In addition, we have road maps. We have credible road maps that, so it's not just committed to the targets that demonstrate how we can deliver to those long-term targets. And as Anna and John have said, we need everything. We need new technology, hybrid electric planes, hydrogen planes. Those will probably start entering service from the mid 2030s. But critically in all of those road maps, sustainable aviation fuels will play a key role. More than 50% of our fuels will be sustainable aviation fuels. 10% the question you ask, it's a big ambition. I mean, in the next 10 years, currently we're less than 0.1%. So we're talking 30 million tonnes by 2030. But as we said, with the right policy, we can deliver that. And I think that then gets us on the trajectory to be able to deliver a truly sustainable industry in 2050. Thank you, Jonathan, for being a part of our panel. John, it is a big ambition. What are your closing remarks? So it is, but we have the technology, we have the experience to get this done. The thing I was worried about actually is the financing. Hundreds, literally hundreds of billions of dollars are going to need to be invested here. But when I spoke to the chief executive of some of the world's biggest banks, their eyes lit up. They see that this is one of the most investable sustainable projects that they have seen. It's very simple. All you need is the policy initiatives of a mandate and the price stability mechanism. And that will unlock the hundreds of billions of dollars that are needed to help Shell and other energy companies and start-ups such as Lanza Jet and Velossis to make this transformation happen. So a small policy change now can unlock not just 10% by 2030, possibly more, and certainly well over 50% by 2050. Excellent. Thank you again for your time and being on the panel. Anna, over to you. Yeah. So the only thing I can add to this a lot has been said is that the industry definitely benefits from greater ambition. And this is exactly what we are doing today with this group and more people to come. We do want to play our part. We are serious about playing our part and working with our customers to help carbonize the sector. And I think key to this will be working within the ecosystem, putting supply, demand and governments together and with everybody sitting at the table towards the same goal. And also we are happy to collaborate within the industry to make sure that all the benefits from flying can actually make a difference here. And we advocate that this is done through a collaborative approach and also through innovative business models where we are going to bring different players to the table that maybe we would have not brought in the past. Excellent. And thank you for being on the panel as well today, Anna. Lauren, take us away. Take us home. The Clean Sky's Ambition Statement has been released. It's been a very big day. Sure. I think the pandemic itself has demonstrated just how crucial aviation is to the global economy and to individual economies. But we have to find a way to retain the benefits of this industry, the multiple benefits of this industry in a climate aligned future. And so all of these different mechanisms are crucial. The demand signal is one of many, and we've spoken about the other levers that are important. And it's also important that we take a look at this, not just from developed markets, but really look at the opportunity that SAP industries provide in emerging economies. And so this demand signal today is, as I said, the foundation on which we are expecting to see a lot more ambition and commitments. And we're excited to continue working with this wide range of stakeholders to make that happen. Fantastic. A very important step forward that you have witnessed today here at our press conference at the Sustainable Development Impact Summit. A big thank you again to our panelists. Thank you for tuning in. And if you'd like to find out more about the Clean Sky's Ambition Statement or SAP, please visit our website, weforum.org, and follow along to the Sustainable Development Impact Summit. Thank you for tuning in and have a great afternoon and evening.