Air New Zealand swaps emissions target for ‘expectations’

Sustainability chief stresses importance of honesty as national carrier lays out decarbonisation ‘guidance’.

Air New Zealand has today published its expected 2030 emissions reductions – less than a year after withdrawing from the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) and ditching its 2030 target.  

New Zealand’s national carrier announced last August that it was scrapping the SBTi-approved goal to reduce its carbon intensity by 28.9%. 

It blamed the lack of affordable sustainable aviation fuel, and an uncertain policy landscape.  

“In recent months, and more so in the last few weeks, it has also become apparent that potential delays to our fleet renewal plan pose an additional risk to the target’s achievability,” CEO Greg Foran wrote in an announcement to the New Zealand Stock Exchange and Australia Stock Exchange at the time. 

Now, the airliner has replaced the target with an “expectation” that it will reduce net emissions by 20-25% by 2030, compared with a 2019 baseline.  

Air New Zealand’s chief sustainability and corporate affairs officer, Kiri Hannifin, took to social media this week to stress that the guidance, which will be updated each year, is “not a static target”.  

The guidance itself caveats that the new goal is based on “current expectations and understanding of the decarbonisation levers and assumptions”, all of which are “evolving rapidly and so carry significant uncertainty and risks for the airline”. 

Hannifin said that the new guidance aims “to provide a more regular and more transparent assessment of Air New Zealand’s path towards our 2050 net-zero carbon emissions target.” 

She acknowledged that there will be “higher levels of ambition”, but added: “For us, we want to be very honest about what we think is possible given the challenges involved in decarbonising the aviation sector. 

“Setting something we can’t reach wouldn’t be tika [ethical].”