WHAT GETS MEASURED GETS MANAGED – WHY CARBON NEUTRALITY IS JUST THE START

By Christian Theuermann, CEO, AXIS Flight Training Systems

Whether world leaders are gathering to discuss the issue, or activists are staging protests to raise awareness – the importance of tackling climate change and switching to carbon neutral is never far from the headlines.  

Many businesses have rightly responded with an increased focus on reducing their own impact. At AXIS Flight Training Systems, we committed to – and achieved – our goal of reaching a CO2-neutral factory in Austria in 2021 and have proudly remained carbon neutral ever since.

While this is a great source of pride for our business, we’re also aware that there is no room for complacency. Making a positive environmental difference is an ongoing process. We believe the best way to make progress is to understand existing performance.

As such, because we recognize what gets measured gets managed, we collaborated with Aviation Sustainability Specialist Azzera, a company that helps businesses assess their carbon footprint, set comprehensive reduction targets in line with their goals and offset their emissions through a portfolio of high-quality carbon credits. 

This includes Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions. These are the total emissions that are a direct consequence of our operations, as well as those that we are indirectly responsible for through our supply chain.

We also agreed a three-year action plan that ensured we’d perform this assessment on an annual basis and invest in projects that remove more harmful emissions from the atmosphere than we produce.  

This has included offsetting thousands of metric tons of carbon each year from 2020-2023 by offering financial support to the Salkhit Wind Farm in Mongolia.

Seeking carbon neutrality across the board

There’s no sustainability silver bullet.  We recognize that we need to continue exploring how to minimize the impact of our entire operation, as well as offsetting the emissions we produce.

Our flight simulators already play a role in reducing emissions by offering an alternative to trainees flying jets for their entire training programs.

Beyond this, we have committed to powering our simulators with renewable energy and using responsibly sourced materials in our manufacturing processes. This includes using OEM hardware from real aircraft that would otherwise have been discarded, while we refurbish cockpit parts for our simulator components.

Similarly, by offering online glasses and VR/AR solutions, we also reduce the need to travel to training centers.

At the heart of our approach is a belief that we should always seek to minimize our environmental impact, including our energy and materials usage, while collaborating with businesses such as Azzera. This ensures that we are in a position to remove more harmful emissions from the atmosphere than our business creates.

Ultimately, while we’re proud of our progress to date. We’re looking to build on this success as we play our part in creating a more sustainable future.