Just Hot Air? Carbon offsetting by airline companies

Guest post by Prof. Hanna-Leena Pesonen, University of Jyväskylä (Finland)

The biennial award ceremonies of Beyond Grey Pinstripes (BGP) initiative organized by Aspen Institute have become the highlight of my academic year. This is a unique event gathering together the colleagues around the globe dedicated to the same mission. While many MBA rankings exist, only one, the BGP, looks beyond reputation and test scores to measure something much more important: how well schools are preparing their students for the environmental, social and ethical complexities of modern-day business. The School of Business and Economics of the University of Jyväskylä has participated in the BGP survey since 2001. We have been honored to be recognized on this list ever since we first made the decision to join. Every time it has been an effort to participate in an 18 month evaluation to map the landscape of teaching and research on issues pertaining to business and society. But we have had no doubt considering it worth while. And so have done other 148 business schools from 24 countries this year. “The schools that are competitive in the Beyond Grey Pinstripes ranking are the real trailblazers - they assure that students have the right skill as well as the will to make things happen”, says Judith Samuelson, Executive Director of the Aspen Institute’s Business and Society Program. This year, the BGP award ceremonies took place in New York in early November. While flying to New York, I was reading the Finnair Blue Wings magazine, which had an interesting editor's letter about carbon offsetting of air travelling.

The main argument put forward by Christer Hugland (Senior Vice President Public Affairs and Coroporate Communications) is that airlines schould reduce their emissions instead of offering carbon offsetting schemes to their customers when buying an airline ticket. The provoking text made me think twice about some interesting questions and the challenges airlines face when pursuing (or at least trying to pursue) an active and credible approach to environmental management and marketing.

The first question is, whether carbon offsetting schemes offered by airlines to its customers is really greenwashing as Christer Haglund claims. He thinks that it is more important to invest in modern low-emission fleets rather than cooperating with carbon offset schemes. That is a strategic decision Finnair hast taken. It is clearly a major communication challenge for a company, which has decided to take another path than (most of) their competitors do, to convince their customers of the rationale and acceptability of their choices.

Another challenge for airlines is also mentioned in Haglund’s text. That is to promote their environmental goals to political decision making, e.g. the Copenhagen climate conference about to start in a few days. This led me to think about the Sustainability Marketing book and the inside-out perspective to transforming markets as a possible strategy for sustainability marketing (see chapter 11).

More environmental management and marketing challenges for airlines are mentioned in Haglund’s piece, such as promoting direct flights and efficient air traffic management in order to avoid keeping aircraft in holding over airports. And there would be many more to add to this list. Reducing the weight on board and using proper landing procedures are examples of improvements the airline companies have direct control over. Development of alternative renewable fuels in cooperation with researchers and energy sector is certainly a crucial issue for air traffic. Looking at the flight service from the life cycle perspective also requires optimizing the related ground transportation (how to get to airport, preferably by public transportation, and promoting that).

Well, it would be interesting to see some comments on this blog to the original question, if carbon offsetting offered by an airline to its customers is greenwashing or not. Personally, during my thoughts over Atlantic, I could not settle for any definite stand on this. What do you think about it?

Photo by Antti Havukainen. Reproduced unter creative commons.