What does it mean to be sustainable now?

That’s the question on everybody’s mind. Just last month, airBaltic signed its Sustainability Report for 2023, releasing audited data about how the company is fulfilling its sustainability commitments. In order to embrace transparent environmental communication and reach climate targets, sustainability has become a highly regulated area, and at airBaltic it’s Zita Baranova’s job to make sure that the work of her fellow employees working on ESG (environment, social, and governance) issues in various airBaltic departments is coordinated and takes place within the ESG framework.

Adherence to sustainability principles in nothing new for many companies, including airBaltic.

Indeed, sustainability has been alive and well at airBaltic for more than 25 years, since the company was founded, because there is no other way. Reducing fuel consumption was important already back then, because the issue of flight efficiency has always been vital from the environmental, safety, and operational perspectives. The company implemented a range of initiatives, such as fuel-efficient standard operating procedures for pilots, the recycling of waste, energy efficiency, and others.

One of my tasks is to bring all of this into our ESG framework. But another task, which takes up most of my time at the moment, is to ensure compliance, because sustainability also has its own regulatory framework. These frameworks exist at different levels – national, international, and also that of the European Green Deal, within which a number of regulations have been adapted. The climate transition plan is a good example. It involves calculating the impact of different activities on emissions and drawing up a plan to reduce them by 2050.

So, there’s a lot of planning and modelling and activity management. But we’ve also got all sorts of interesting internal projects, such as the operational improvements employees in various departments have been making and a few other new initiatives we’re working on.

It seems that operational improvements would be most directly related to sustainability issues.

I’d like to highlight our Flight Operations support team. They are working on how to reduce the weight of operating flights, how to reduce fuel consumption, and how to optimise all operations so that the flight is efficient not only from an environmental point of view, but also so that all the processes and operations are safe for our flight crews and passengers.

Last year, we launched various voluntary initiatives and will continue to do so this year. One of these, for example, is giving our customers the opportunity to buy one kilogram of SAF (sustainable aviation fuel) additive along with their flight. This year, we’ll go further and increase that amount – in the booking system, people will be able to buy 50 or even 100 percent of their proportion of a flight’s SAF.

One trend we’re still seeing in the market is emissions offsets. But unfortunately, not all offsetting initiatives result in notable climate improvements. So it’s no coincidence that our strategy focuses on continually increasing the use of SAF.

What is SAF?

SAF is sustainable aviation fuel, and it has the same chemical formula as conventional fuels, but the product is made from renewable rather than petroleum resources. Recycled waste, biomass, recycled cooking oils, or green hydrogen produced with wind or solar power – there’s a whole range of raw materials from which chemists already know how to produce SAF. And they do.

The Neste plant in Rotterdam produces SAF from oil used to make fast-food burgers and fries. I think we’ll be seeing more and more SAF plants popping up in the next ten years, also in Europe.

But the whole industry needs to work together to explain and increase the demand for sustainable fuels. The more people willing to vote with their euros and create demand for SAF, the sooner regional SAF plants will be established.

But there are still people who believe that the concept of sustainability cannot in any way include flying.

Yes, in the airline industry this is known as flight shaming. Sustainability is an all-encompassing topic, and without a holistic approach, no right or good decision can be made. Our economy and society is very broad, and we have to take into account where we live and what the social, economic, climatic, and geographical characteristics of our region are. To illustrate, consider forestry as an example. Across diverse ecosystems such as the Amazon rainforest or the Nordic boreal forest, the approach to social, environmental, and governance characteristics vary. It’s important to adjust how we practise sustainable forestry to fit the specific needs of different environmental and social ecosystems.

Similarly, if people in the Baltics stopped flying, it would be difficult for them to maintain relationships with people elsewhere and for countries to develop economically. For example, it takes two days to reach Amsterdam by car from here. Poland, the closest major economic centre outside the Baltic states, is eight to ten hours by car from Riga. We’ve even calculated the emissions: if I drove to Amsterdam alone by car, I’d produce twice the emissions I would if I flew. So, that’s my answer to flight shaming and harming the environment. However, in urban agglomerations, where the cities are very close to each other, the situation is completely different. There, it’s probably better to use the train.

And the third argument is that the aviation industry has already saved fuel wherever possible simply due to the cost of that fuel. Aviation is a very visible sector, but it’s responsible for only two to three percent of the world’s total emissions. And that’s why it’s particularly important – and this is something I take a lot of pride in – that airBaltic flies the most efficient aircraft available in its class.

A draft directive is also being drawn up to prevent so-called greenwashing. Why is this important?

Greenwashing means pretending to be more sustainable in one’s communications than one actually is, and it’s a very easy thing to fall into My household wouldn’t be sustainable if I just wore ‘green’ clothes; I also need to look at what the materials in my apartment are made of, what my car is made of, where the food I buy is produced, and so on.

By 2027, companies will have to collect sustainability data from their supply chains. Many companies, including airBaltic, already have some of this information in place. We’ll also be much more cautious in our communications, because we don’t want to inadvertently mislead the public. We also have a number of in-depth studies planned on exactly how sustainable our products are. I think we’ll find that many of our products are actually more sustainable than we think, but also that there’s room for improvement.

We can say that airBaltic is an airline that flies the most efficient aircraft in its class on the market today. We mainly use conventional aviation fuel and a little bit of SAF, which we are increasing every year, but there’s no other way at the moment. That is, until there’s a huge increase in SAF production to replace conventional fuel. SAF is currently two to four times more expensive than conventional aviation fuel, and its supply still cannot match demand. That’s why it’s not used to its full extent or by all airlines, because then flying would become an activity only for the elite.

In order to be able to stand up for something so powerfully, one needs to really believe in it. Where did you get this belief?

My background is in consultancy and business development. Having spent 12 years in this field, I’ve seen a wide variety of industries in Latvia. This means that it’s very difficult to persuade me that this or that industry is or is not doing something, because there’s a big chance that I’ve already studied it myself (laughs).

But the projects I liked best were those related to renewable energy. I enjoyed, and was actually quite successful in, proving the business viability of green projects. Long before I joined the field of aviation, I had to demonstrate both the business and environmental sustainability of various projects. Sustainability cannot be green to the extreme. If it is, then you’re living in the forest, not doing any business or building a country. For me, sustainability always goes hand in hand with economics and business.

I did, however, take a break from the business world for a while because I was very burnt out. But when I decided to enter the job market again, I thought about the directions I wanted to go in, and I defined three things for myself. First, I knew that I wanted to work for a big company, because if you change a big company by one or two degrees, the impact is incomparably greater than if you change a small company by 80 degrees. The wingspan is very different!

Second, because I’m good at development, I wanted to work with that instead of operations. When I received an offer to join airBaltic as its Head of Sustainability, it was a perfect match. So, be careful what you wish for!

And the third important thing: I want to do something good for the planet while I’m here.