Google Joins Amex GBT SAF Program

Google has joined American Express Global Business
Travel’s sustainable aviation fuel program dubbed Avelia, the travel management
company announced Sunday at the Global Business Travel Association convention
in Dallas.

“Google joining is significant for three reasons,”
said Amex GBT VP of global sustainability Nora Lovell Marchant. “It
underscores the importance of the customer always comes first. Second, it’s the
one-year
anniversary of Avelia, the first blockchain-powered solution for SAF.
Finally, it underscores the transformative power of technology when it comes to
energy transition.”

Amex GBT partnered with Shell Aviation and Accenture, with
the support of the Energy Web Foundation to create the book-and-claim platform
last year.

“The Avelia model puts customers in control,”
Lovell Marchant said. “Corporations can purchase SAF and contract for SAF.
Whatever the customer puts in the contract that is what the customer gets: the type
of fuel they want, the feedstocks or exclusions of feedstocks from that fuel,
the carbon intensity from that fuel and the data from that fuel. … This is how
corporations are now doing business. This is how they are imbedding
decarbonization right into their travel programs.”

Google joins such companies as Bank of
America and Aon, as well as carriers in the program including Delta Air Lines,
JetBlue, Cathay Pacific and others. She added the platform also helps avoid
double counting by ensuring the environmental attributes associated with SAF
are only allocated to the airline and to the corporation that invests in SAF.