Photo:scottlowe, Creative Commons, Flickr

By now you likely have heard of Silverjet, the world’s first completely carbon neutral airline.

Launched January 25th, 2007, the company sought to one-up other luxury carriers by providing a chauffeured car service to passengers, a guaranteed 30-minute airport check-in modeled after the private jet system, and lounges in Newark and Luton that serve champagne. The revamped Boeing 767-200s hold100 flat beds.

The coup de grace is the cost of offsetting the carbon emissions created by each leg of the flight built into each aggressively priced ticket, starting at $899 each way.  

“The first decision was to become carbon neutral, and the second was to find a partner,” says Silverjet’s Chief Executive Officer and founder Lawrence Hunt. “Business has to take the lead because consumers are confused by it and we can’t really afford to take the risk for the planet. The air industry does produce a small proportion of the emissions but it does produce pollution and we need to clean up after ourselves.”

Silverjet chose The CarbonNeutral Company, originally conceived as Future Forests. The CarbonNeutral Company offsets carbon emissions by planting trees, the best known offset technology in 1997, when the company was founded.  It was the first organization in the world to put calculators up on their website to calculate carbon footprints.

“It gives you power,” says Sue Welland, co-founder of The CarbonNeutral Company. “If you understand how much CO2 you produce you can do something about it.”  

“First and foremost the environment benefits, hopefully, and that’s very important to us,” says Andria Piekarz, Silverjet’s US President. “We think there is an opportunity, particularly in the US, to raise awareness of the fact that the more miles you fly, the more damage that occurs, and that there’s an opportunity to not have to do a lot of heavy lifting to offset that damage.”

Silverjet handpicked three offsetting schemes from CarbonNeutral’s ongoing projects to create its own portfolio: compact fluorescents in Jamaica, methane capping in Pennsylvania, and wind energy in New Zealand.

At the beginning of each fiscal quarter Silverjet writes a check based on its measured and calculated emissions to The CarbonNeutral Company, and the latter invests it in Silverjet’s project portfolio, as if drawing from a carbon back account.

In order to ensure carbon calculation accuracy and professional transparency, science partner, Edinburgh Center for Carbon Management (ECCM), estimates the carbon created by the airline’s ground operations, aircraft type and fuel, based on projected load factors for each flight.

On average, a Silverjet aircraft produces 64 tons of CO2 per leg of the flight, which costs $1.40 per passenger per hour. 14 hours of flying (one round trip) costs Silverjet about $20, or 1% of their profits. The pricing structure is such that for 100 seats, at a certain capacity, the airline is expected to clear a profit.

Silverjet sends a check to CarbonNeutral based on the estimated figures, and then submits exact stats at the end of each quarter. If the estimate is low, the airline sends more money. CarbonNeutral refunds Silverjet if the estimate comes in high. Ms. Welland explains that it is an exact system.

With the Jamaica project, the money received from Silverjet subsidizes the higher cost of energy efficient light bulbs in Jamaica, the aim being to simultaneously get as many of these bulbs into hotels and communities as possible and make them the preferred choice overall.

The methane capping in Pennsylvania is an unusual project, in that it is based purely on environmental integrity. Methane is a 21 times more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2, and it is leaking from old and disused mines around the world. Carbon finance projects like this one burn off the leaking methane and turn it into CO2, reducing the damage caused 21 times over.

Finally, investing in wind energy in New Zealand reduces dependence on fossil fuels.

Projects are constantly monitored and verified by Silverjet’s partners who ensure that the offsets bought are installed and managed well.

Another airline, SAS Group based in Denmark, is working with The CarbonNeutral Company to offer a voluntary offset system. When customers buy their tickets on the SAS website they can choose to pay an extra fee to make the flight carbon neutral.
SAS’s portfolio includes wind energy in Inner Mongolia, New Zealand and India. Since the October 2006 Stern Report entitled “Climate Change Fight Can’t Wait’” came out, calls to CarbonNeutral from companies interested in carbon offset and climate consulting have increased 10-fold.

Instead of frequent flyer points, Silverjet travelers receive carbon-offset points they can track within their profiles. There will be no frequent flyer club for Silverjet; in order to do so the airline would have to forfeit its competitive price point.

As a start-up without an economy class, there is no need to overcharge business class passengers to make up for losses on economy flyers. Silverjet is therefore free to keep its prices competitive with other luxury airlines, as well as consistently out-price business class on conventional airlines.

“The airline industry is here to deliver a service to their customers. And to be good at that you have to talk to your customers, find out what they want, and get busy delivering it to them,” says Andria Piekarz, Silverjet’s US president.

Silverjet was quick to catch onto the idea that business needs to behave responsibly or face repercussions from government or its customers. In terms of the future of air travel, the company also believes that today’s emissions regulations are only the beginning and that there will eventually be an emissions tax. When regulations eventually do come, this airline will be ahead of the game.

Silverjet looks forward to adding a second aircraft in the spring and a third service in the fall. Over the next 5-10 years, the company hopes to improve its equipment with an Airbus A-350 or Boeing 787, neither of which is available before 2013. These aircrafts will be made of composite materials, resulting in planes that are lighter and burn 40% less fuel.

Silverjet plans to have 4 routes and 10 aircrafts in 10 years and become the leader in the luxury class airline industry. 

Erin H. McKinnon