Environment, Flight Shaming, Taxes – Finding And Delivering The Best Solution For Sustainability
As customers, employees, suppliers and society at large begin to place increasing importance on corporate social responsibility, corporate leaders have started to implement practises which positively contribute to society. The big challenge for airlines is how to develop an approach that can truly deliver on these ambitions. Widerøe, chief strategy officer, Andreas Kollbye Aks highlights how sustainability will drive future airline strategy decisions ranging from flight shaming to electric aircraft.
Transcript
Andreas Kollbye Aks:You're absolutely right. I mean, it's extremely important, especially in Scandinavia and the northern parts of Europe. I mean, the focus on sustainability is extremely high, not only among our customers but also from the political side. So we see a, I mean, a dual challenge here, or a where we have a customer base which is becoming more and more concerned about climate change, and that affects the demand. We haven't seen too much of it yet, but then we also realize that, okay, younger generations are more focused on this. So when we talk about, for instance, flight shaming as a concept, you see that the younger generations are heavily into this. And therefore, even though it doesn't affect our P&L too much yet, it must be seen as a lead indicator because that is going to be a more and more substantial part of our customer base. Secondly, I mean, the tax burden increase over the last 3 years has been more than 100%, and it's all kind of founded in environmental taxes. So those 2 dimensions contribute to the fact that we have to take this seriously. But also, I mean, in addition to the fact that sustainability affects profits, it's also so that we are probably approaching a technology change which makes investment strategies challenges as well. And that's the other thing we're looking into. Okay, how do we go from what we're having today, these technologies we're using today, to new, more environmentally friendly technologies. So therefore we launched research with Rolls-Royce trying to understand when and what can we expect of low to zero emission aircraft technologies in 2030, 2035. And to an airline where you invest in fleets with a 20, 25-year perspective, it's extremely important regardless of what you think about the environment to understand how this technology change will affect your future fleet. I mean, with the E2, we, we got the most environmentally friendly regional jet available, and the idea is now to connect western part of Norway with Europe because we believe customers want to fly direct. They save time, they also save the environment, fly shorter direct instead of flying hub and spoke. So with the E2, The E2 enabled us to fly directly from those smaller destinations in Norway where you don't have any direct access to— where you didn't have any direct access to Europe. Now you have with the E2. So that's the whole idea of the aircraft, that it connects secondary places in Norway to major destinations in Europe so that you don't have to fly through Oslo, for instance. It's quite efficient. It is. I mean, if you fly direct instead of flying zigzag through Europe, You save the environment as well. And this is also a discussion which is important because what we've heard here today at the conference is also discussions about what can we do when it comes to air traffic management, right? Because if you can fly more direct, that's also a good way of saving the environment. And we are also looking into whether we can have new avionics, a better navigation system so that we can fly shorter distances. So there are many ways where we can do a little more. And I think that is the key message, is that we have to do everything we can to make sure that aviation is as sustainable as possible so that this industry can grow without impact, without any impact on the environment, right? I think the biggest challenge is that we need to show that we're doing something and that we're taking this seriously, because with increased tax burden, we may face a risk that, okay, the airline will not be in a financial position to do the investments needed to do a technology shift and to leverage new technology and to make this move forward. So it could be counterproductive if the politicians decide to tax more and tax so much that we don't have the financial power to invest in new, more environmentally friendly technologies. So we need to show and prove that, yes, we are doing this. And also convince the society that we're doing whatever we can, but you need to let us do that and not tax us out of profit while we're trying to do a substantial technology change. Thank you.
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