Lufthansa Group has announced it is planning on purchasing carbon removal credits of 40,000 tonnes of CO2 from the Airbus Carbon Capture Offer (ACCO) service.
The so-called Direct Air Carbon Capture and Storage (DACCS) technology filters CO2 from the air and stores it permanently. Lufthansa has now signed a contract with Airbus on the pre-purchase of verified and durable carbon removal credits of 40,000 tonnes of CO2. The certificates will be available from 2026 and an annual purchase of carbon removal credits of 10,000 tonnes of CO2 has been agreed for four years.
“The Lufthansa Group is strongly committed to making air transport more sustainable and to achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2050. This includes billion-euro investments in continuous fleet modernization and our strong commitment to Sustainable Aviation Fuels. Technical CO2 removal solutions like advanced and direct carbon capture and storage processes will play a complementary role in achieving our decarbonization goals”, said Caroline Drischel, Head of Corporate Responsibility at the Lufthansa Group.
As the aviation industry moves towards net zero CO2-emissions by 2050, carbon removal will play an important role in addressing remaining emissions.
Nicolas Chrétien, Head of Environment & Sustainability at Airbus
“The Lufthansa Group was one of the very first aviation companies to work with Airbus to explore the potential of direct air carbon capture and storage solutions”, said Nicolas Chrétien, Head of Environment & Sustainability at Airbus. “We are very pleased to go one step further with the Lufthansa Group and keep up the momentum to make decarbonized air travel a reality.”
The Airbus carbon removal initiative is based on Airbus’ partnership with 1PointFive that includes the pre-purchase of carbon-removal credits of 400,000 tonnes of CO2 to be delivered over four years. The US-based company is working closely with leading organizations to develop practical pathways to achieve global climate targets.
Once removed from the air, the CO2 is stored deep underground in geologic saline formations. As the aviation industry cannot capture CO2 emissions released into the atmosphere at source, a direct air carbon capture and storage solution would allow the sector to extract CO2 emissions from its operations directly from atmospheric air. In addition to the comprehensive measures that companies are taking to reduce CO2 emissions, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), carbon removal is required to support the achievement of net-zero targets.
Additionally, the Direct Air Carbon Capture (DAC) technology will be an important building block for the production of next-generation Sustainable Aviation Fuels (SAF). For SAF production from renewable energies with the Power-to-Liquid or Sun-to-Liquid technologies, CO2 is captured from the atmosphere and processed further. For this, a DAC infrastructure will be needed. In IATA’s Infrastructure Roadmap, the development and the promised success of SAF are closely linked to the adoption of DAC infrastructures.
