“Airlines may be rivals for passengers in the market, but there’s a shared understanding about sustainability, and how the complexity of the challenges ahead can only be addressed by working together. We compete in the air but cooperate on the ground!”
Anders Fagernæs, Vice President of Sustainability, Norwegian
Norwegian is successfully reconciling its sustainable ambitions with its need to serve a growing number of customers. With fresh ideas for fuel, aircraft, and load factor optimization – much of it enabled by innovative technology – it’s ready to take the low-cost fares model towards 2050 and beyond.
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With 4,000 people operating its young fleet of 70+ aircraft, Norwegian is Norway’s largest airline and a lifeline for many cities across the Nordic region and beyond. Like the people of its homeland, it’s long been a believer in a Net Zero future – but unlike some, it sees its business methods as enabler not a barrier, with the high load factors and mass scale of the low-cost model lowering emissions per RPK while increasing the social value of bringing people together.
Norwegian’s VP of Sustainability is Anders Fagernæs. With an educational background in economics and political science, he shares his airline’s view of emerging SAF mandates being as much opportunity as challenge, with the chance of becoming fossil-independent opening the way for the next 50-100 years of global growth.
RESOURCE-PRODUCTIVE, NOT RESOURCE-POOR
The Nordic social democratic model means Norwegian knows how to face regulatory burdens: it already faces blending mandates in Norway, Sweden, and France, ahead of global pace. And it’s coming up with creative ways to stay competitive, summed up as: getting more from what you’ve got.
Norwegian’s plan is to reduce CO2 emissions 45% by 2030: 14% from fleet renewal (its average plane is under a decade old) 5% from operational efficiencies (following the initiative of a polymath pilot on staff, its captains now receive detailed fuel UTE reports on their smart phone after each landing) and 16% from SAF.
It’s also integrating climate risk into corporate governance, ensuring boardroom strategy and operational tactics are aligned.
And the low-cost fares model is the enabler. Revenue and ticket pricing software that ensures every flight travels full reduces emissions per passenger per flight; data from the aircraft itself informs the SkyBreathe application Norwegian’s pilots use to plan fuel-efficient routes; flying up-to-date equipment means cleaner-burning engines and lighter airframes. All are good for a low-cost business model – but they’re also good for the environment.
SOLVING THE PAPERWORK PROBLEM
Looking forward, Anders sees a growing issue in the back office: the piles of paperwork. Today, much of the documentation that records GHG savings and offsets is based on declarations, not data; it’s a manual process with trust a key issue.
As the SAF sector develops, the requirements for producers to document to suppliers, suppliers to document to airlines, and airlines to customers will rise exponentially – meaning an automated, transparent, and seamless process must somehow emerge to address it. It’s one reason Anders values partnerships like Airlines for Europe, where joined-up thinking can build understanding and consensus.
WATCH ANDERS FAGERNÆS DISCUSS
SAF, COST COMPETITIVENESS AND GOVERNMENT COLLABORATION
WITH MIKALA GRUBB IN OUR SAF TALKS
GLOBAL GROWTH WITHOUT GHG GROWTH
Documentation aside, Anders’ view of a SAF world is positive. In 10 years, flying will be more expensive relative to incomes than today, as the externalities of GHGs are priced into tickets. At the same time, however, the population of middle-income nations will rise by 2.5bn – and they’ll want to fly - for work, vacation and to visit friends and family. Moving them between airports sustainably means flight plans optimized for fuel, loads with every seat occupied, and aircraft that make full use of every advance in materials, designs, and technology: all activities Norwegian is deeply invested in.
SAF IS A PART OF A SUSTAINABILITY ECOSYSTEM
SAF isn’t a complete solution for sustainability; it’s part of an ecosystem that includes better technology, evolving stakeholder behaviors, new best practices and methods. But to be truly effective, the impact of all these must be fairly and accurately documented across the whole supply web.
