The travel industry requires rapid development of sustainable aviation fuel and access to renewable energy in destinations if it’s to meet decarbonisation and ‘net zero’ targets.
World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) president and chief executive Julia Simpson laid out the challenges when she addressed Abta’s Delivering Sustainable Travel Conference in London yesterday, saying: “Transport and energy are the main drivers of travel and tourism emissions.”
She noted airlines “don’t have a choice in using jet fuel” given the lack of supply of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) and argued: “The problem is the main energy providers. Fuel manufacturers need incentives to make SAF. We need governments to take SAF seriously.”
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Simpson suggested meeting the challenges around SAF “will make the biggest impact” and insisted: “We need more SAF and faster.”
The WTTC demanded urgent action on SAF in a call to governments this week, urging they undertake SAF feasibility studies and increase SAF production.
Simpson praised the US government’s massive programme of incentives and subsidies for renewable energy including SAF in its Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) last year.
She said: “Europe has really kicked off about the IRA giving massive incentives for producing green energy. Well, good on the US. We should do the same.”
Simpson also pointed out hoteliers frequently have no choice in how the energy properties use is produced, whether from renewable sources or, in the worst case, from coal.
She told the conference energy produced by utility companies accounts for one fifth of travel and tourism’s global emissions and argued: “Getting our energy from renewable resources is critical.”
Simpson insisted: “The idea that anyone in our sector has sat back and not taken our environmental responsibilities seriously is wrong.”
She highlighted the WTTC’s Environmental and Social Research report, published at the end of last year, which provided the first detailed calculation of travel and tourism’s climate footprint.
It calculated the sector contributed 8.1% of global warming gases in 2019.
Simpson explained: “We decided to come up with a sophisticated measurement of our [sector’s] impacts on the environment [and] developed a replicable methodology.
“We measured greenhouse gas [GHG] emissions by sector and by country and compared them against 2010. We counted everything.”
She noted: “For nine years before the Covid-19 pandemic, we grew at double the rate of global GDP. Travel and tourism’s emissions footprint has decoupled from GDP growth.”
Simpson also highlighted the WTTC’s Hotel Sustainability Basics programme, launched in March, which targets the 80% of hotels in the world outside of the main hospitality groups.
Hotels can achieve verification by meeting nine of 12 ‘basic’ sustainability criteria within three years.
“A lot of small hotels don’t know where to start,” Simpson explained.
The WTTC’s global footprint calculation was produced with the Saudi-based Sustainable Global Tourism Centre and Tourism Economics.