NetJets sets hourly rates for carbon offsets in global sustainability push

Worldwide private jet leader NetJets has launched an umbrella campaign for its initiatives to reduce carbon footprint, including increasing awareness on how its customers can participate

While NetJets has long had many initiatives around reducing carbon footprint, today, it is launching an umbrella program around three key points of focus. It is also for the first time publishing on its consumer website the cost to buy carbon offsets and now will highlight the offset options in all proposals to both individual and corporate customers.

It follows up on last month’s announcement that NetJets will be the launch customer for Signature Flight Support’s Renew SAF program in San Francisco.

Brad Ferrell, executive vice president of administrative services for NetJets, said the company now wants to take everything it has been doing and leverage it. The goal is to make it a leader that helps push the entire category forward, something he said falls in line with the approach owner Berkshire Hathaway has for its various units.

He said, over the past year in a half, the Columbus, Ohio seller of fractional jet shares and jet cards had been seeking to figure out, “How we can bring together the disparate pieces of our sustainability initiatives into one comprehensive program and really use it to drive sustainability, not just for NetJets and our owners, but aviation industry as a whole,”

Pat Gallagher, NetJets’ president for sales and marketing, said part of announcing it now and as a package, is to raise awareness with customers, not only what the company is doing, but how easy it is for them to participate.

Fractional share or lease owners and jet card customers can buy offset on a trip-by-trip basis, for the duration of their program, or even for a single hour at a time.

Carbon offsets start at $25.58 per hour on the Embraer Phenom 300 and range to $68.72 on the Bombardier Global 6000.

NetJets Carbon Offset Hourly Rates and 25-Hour Cost

The broader program involves three prongs, one around sustainable fuel, and helping make it more accessible by making big purchases, the company’s ongoing corporate responsibility, and then making sure both its UHNW and corporate accounts know how they can participate, and making it easy.

Sustainable Fuel

• NetJets is purchasing enough sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) to account for all flights out of San Francisco, California, where the fuel supply is located, and its home base of Columbus, Ohio, in partnership with Signature Flight Support.
  • This totals up to three million gallons of SAF produced by Neste, the largest provider of renewable jet fuel and diesel globally, and the world’s third most sustainable company according to Corporate Knights’ 2020 ranking.
  • This commitment amounts to an “unprecedented” volume of sustainable fuel in the private aviation space and supports the continued industry availability of SAF, which can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by up to 80% compared to conventional jet fuel.
• NetJets is continuing to explore additional SAF purchase opportunities in both the U.S. and Europe.

Corporate Responsibility

• NetJets Europe has been carbon neutral since 2012, going above and beyond European Union regulations to participate in the Emissions Trading System, which imposes a cap and cost on emissions but does not necessitate carbon neutrality. 
• NetJets will offset its administrative and training flights in the U.S. beginning in 2021, amounting to approximately 1,600 flights annually.

Consumer Participation

• The NetJets Blue Skies program encourages shareowners and jet card customers worldwide to take responsibility for the environmental impact of their flight by seamlessly purchasing the equivalent amount of carbon credits to ensure their flight activity is carbon neutral.
• To do so, it has partnered with ClimateCare to offset emissions through projects that protect forests, capture and destroy landfill gas and scale up renewable energy distribution, supporting several UN Sustainable Development Goals. All projects adhere to the highest leading global verification standards.

As of October 2020, NetJets owners in the U.S. have offset 75,000 metric tons of carbon. In Europe, customers have offset over one million metric tons.