The news was picked up by the Wall Street Journal here http://online.wsj.com/article/PR-CO-20110620-903499.html and our local news agency Bernama at http://www.bernama.com/bernama/v5/newsbusiness.php?id=595451

If you want to see a video of the Eco Wash in action, youtube it at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvdK46bcqzc

Supersize my car wash

Flying the Flag in Phua Chu Kang boots

We did it!  After months of delay due to bad weather, a bus load of MAS employees went to plant tree saplings in Pekan, Pahang, as part of our Voluntary Carbon Offset Scheme (VCOS).  Passengers flying MAS have the option of offsetting their portion of carbon dioxide emitted during their flight, thus helping to reduce global warming.  MAS staff on duty travel have their emissions automatically offset.  We joined many hundreds of people from the local community and school, government agencies involved including Forestry, FRIM, MNRE and local government, and our corporate donors Khazanah and Maxis.

We are the first! This is the first such carbon offset scheme in Malaysia involving a partnership between private and public sectors.  On top of that, we were also the first airline in ASEAN to launch a voluntary carbon offset scheme back in 2008.

Unlike the previous few days, the skies remained clear and we enjoyed the carnival-like atmosphere as educational booths had been set up by government agencies and local universities.  There was ample food and drinks, and lucky draw prizes awaited those lucky enough to find a red envelope waiting for them at their designated planting plot!  A live band was also present, belting out tunes and adding to the jovial atmosphere.

Our tree planting forms part of the rehabilitation and conservation of the South-East Pahang Peat Swamp Forest (SEPPSF), internationally known for being the largest contiguous peat swamp forest in the world.  When we plant trees, we are not only offsetting the carbon dioxide emitted by air travel, but are also helping in the conservation of hundreds of species of plants and animals, some found only in this area.  This tree planting marks the culmination of 2 years hard effort by MAS and various government agencies.  We have collected RM180,000 so far, and future carbon offset efforts will continue to tap into this fund.

Mucking about for a good cause

You can make a difference! When you travel next on MAS, do consider a donation to the VCOS fund – our online calculator makes it easy to calculate the cost of offsetting your carbon emissions, and you have the option of fully offsetting, or donating any amount that you wish.  A return trip from Kuala Lumpur to Melbourne only costs RM38.40 to fully offset!

http://site.malaysiaairlines.com/campaigns/calculate.aspx

FAQs at http://site.malaysiaairlines.com/campaigns

Sustainability at MAS. MAS has many initiatives that enable us to reduce our carbon emissions and footprint.  Our new 737-800s and A380s, for example, burn less fuel than the aircraft that they are or will be replacing.  Our meal containers served in-flight are made from sugar cane fibre, reducing our reliance on plastic and paper products.  Other initiatives are in the pipe-line and will be announced once they take off.  We also take a holistic view of Sustainability, looking at all three aspects of business, community and environment in any particular project.  Through our tree-planting, we are contributing to the conservation of the environment by adding a Voluntary Carbon Offset element to how we do business.  Not forgetting the local community, we have used the proceeds raised during Townhall to buy 2 netbooks and a printer, items requested by Sekolah Kebangsaan Runchang, the local Orang Asli school.  Our staff also conducted a learning session during the launch, teaching the orang asli children about global warming and how planting trees can help reduce it.

Edutainment session on global warming & tree planting

At MAS, we care.

Local orang asli kids joining in the fun

As with all airlines that serve the European markets, we had started our EU ETS monitoring and reporting activities for the whole of this calendar year. As I type this we are finalising the legal and commercial arrangements with a vendor on the verification process- a process / exercise that is mandatory for the EU ETS compliance.

Disappointingly, our Green Office program has not been running as smoothly as we had hoped. There were stop-start activities- some folks have seriously taken this on board, but most have been busy with the airline’s main focus, sidelining this “secondary activity” to pursue company objectives. We did have one building-wide “spring clean” exercise in our own office, where at least on a local level we are now aware of how much paper products we use and dispose. We are looking at having this as a recurrent activity, as well as for other buildings to do the same.

Our Voluntary Carbon Offset program has gained another corporate client- Khazanah Nasional Berhad, who joined our program with a donation. Thank you ladies for supporting our initiative

And on this note, we will be having a tree-planting event in January 2011 together with FRIM and the Pahang State Government, to assist in their redevelopment of the Pekan peat swamps.

On November 11th we jointly conducted the Airport and airline on sustainability seminar, where we shared similar and different challenges and approaches in dealing with climate change in the industry, and where we also learned about our guest speaker’s Deep Green program. I would very much like to see this become a series of events, with Malaysia Airports again, on similar topics, but with expanded scope and depth. Aviation and climate change is an interesting combination of topics internationally, even more so for the locals perspective.

Moving forward we will be further pursuing the sustainability agenda for the airline. A lot of 2010 was spent creating the awareness and educating the internal folks and management about this topic and how the airline would benefit with green initiatives. We have been engaging the higher management with this topic, both from a CSR as well as a brand-positioning perspective. 2011 will be the year when this becomes an internal policy, where we will also be pushing for more employee engagement activities to support this slow but steady cultural change.

On that note Malaysia Airlines will also therefore start to formally report on its sustainability efforts. This will include formalising this as a policy, increase internal adoption at the corporate level, conduct activities where we will measure and set targets for our (reduced) carbon footprint, increase our Green Office and 3R programs to include onboard activities, social responsibility activities, and have fun at the same time

The notable / relevant-to-us points (quotes from) this article are:

• Before the annual emissions and tonne-kilometre data reports can be submitted they must first be audited by an independent and approved verification body.
• However, the process and regulation of appointing verifiers specifically for the Aviation EU ETS is far from uniform across Europe and has the potential to lead to a situation of too few approved verifiers handling the audits of too many of the 4,000-odd operators in a short space of time.
• The verifiers themselves must first be accredited by the relevant accreditation body in the EU state they are seeking to operate before they can be approved by the respective Competent Authority (CA).

By the way, Malaysia Airline reports to the UK state.

• .. Although there are lists of verifiers released by each body, they may only be accredited to perform fixed installation EU ETS audits and not Aviation EU ETS audits.

And most relevant / impacting to our operations is this point:

• The CAs of France, Germany and the UK have yet to publish lists of aviation-specific accredited verifiers and it is therefore up to aircraft operators to select and check the status of potential verification bodies. Many of the bigger airlines will have already started, or even completed, a tendering process and are likely to choose the larger, international auditing companies.

Malaysia Airlines will be starting its own request for quotations too, this month, for this verification process. While we may be “working in the dark” in that there is still no list of definite approved verifiers, we will have to carefully look into the profiles of the potential verifiers we are considering.

There is no mandate, and the government says it’s simply making suggestions to companies listed on the SGX. So how can Singapore convince companies to adopt sustainability reporting? The answer appears to be public pressure.

This excerpt, taken from the Fast Company’s website, titled “Singapore Stock Exchange Uses Peer Pressure to Encourage Sustainability Reporting“

Two things worth noting: That the Singaporean authority has taken the stance towards adopting sustainability, and that through the stock exchange, that they have also set out guidelines for awareness and adoption, and that it is also available for the public’s comments.

An interesting extract from the policy is the statement below:

The Exchange adopts a progressive approach towards the policy on sustainability reporting, which balances global and local developments. The policy statement sets the baseline for holistic reporting going beyond corporate governance to social and environmental aspects. We expect, with our statement, to generate awareness among listed companies, leading to acceptance and commitment to sustainability as an operating principle as well as to be reported on. As the pace of sustainability reporting gains momentum amongst issuers, the Exchange will review our policy on sustainability reporting to keep pace with global developments and will consider formulating formal rules to regulate disclosure if necessary.

While we are aware that there are already financial institutions with local presence looking into “alternative” investments such as in this space, it will be interesting to see how well this takes off regionally.

Also, as with all things “voluntary”, it will also be interesting to see how much of this is voluntarily taken up by the reporting companies, before the SGX considers “formulating formal rules to regulate disclosure if necessary.”

Maybe mandating something is the way to get adoption (of any and all initiatives) going?

I saw this headline in today’s Star Online.

During the Khazanah’s Silverbook workshop (posted earlier) we learned that, despite China being one of the biggest polluter in the world- this Star article says that they are indeed the world’s largest greeenhouse gas emitter; that at least they are taking responsible actions in looking into their “unique” position. The article says that they are looking into policies of carbon cap and trade, and indeed- they do already have a China Beijing Environmental Exchange (CBEEX website) mechanism in place, albeit with teething problems.

Part of the reason for China’s push into this is due to (sourced from the article):

The cornerstone of any Chinese carbon market will be the country’s pledge, made last year, to reduce its 2005 carbon intensity rate — the amount of CO2 produced per unit of GDP — by 40-45 percent before the end of 2020.

In Malaysia we too have our own efforts, after our Prime Minister made a similar pledge to “reduce its carbon dioxide emission to 40 per cent by the year 2020 compared to the 2005 levels subject to assistance from developed countries”. As a follow-up, the Ministry of Energy, Water and Communications launched its Greentech : 1 Identity, as well as conducting workshops with industries, aimed similarly at tacking our own GHG emission levels.

To share some related insights: The aviation industry, by its nature of continuous improvements in fuel efficiencies, has always been in the forefront of being green. Airframe manufacturers collaborate with engine manufacturers to come up with the engineering wonders that we see in the skies now. Airports and traffic controllers and aviation authorities collaborate to take it further by developing policies to reduce the impact of airplanes with optimised flight patterns, taxiing policies, new methods of airplane approaches and landings, etc.

Because of all these efforts, the general public is (still) surprised to learn that compared with all other industries in the world, aviation only contributes 2-3% of the total GHG emissions.

A quick background into what the Silverbook is; I am sure you can recognise what some of these are on:

Click for bigger picture

Two of the principles from the Silverbook states:

GLCs should proactively contribute to society in ways that create
value for their shareholders and other key stakeholders

GLCs should actively manage their contributions to society in the
most efficient and effective manner in line with industry norms
and best practices as well as the relevant regulatory framework

Broken down, and also coupled with our Prime Minister’s pledge to reduce our carbon emission intensity by 40%, this translates to the core area of environmental protection and policies. Therefore the topic of sustainability comes under this.

So what is sustainability?

Whilst the topic of sustainability is both wide and also evolving, I would like to attempt to define it for our use.

Definitions of sustainability often refer to the three pillars

Source, and more elaborative explanations, at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainability

“Sustainability is the capacity to endure”

In our context, it means that given our lifestyle of:

• consumption (of food, fuel, manufacturing);
• waste (trash, inefficiencies/leakages);
• development (deforestation, mining (BP?), more cars on the roads);

we will eventually BOTH continue to harm the environment as well as deplete our limited resources.

An interesting note is that there is existing data indicating that Malaysia is already quickly becoming one of the bigger polluters per capita in the world. But what is more interesting is that, whilst China is also one of the highest polluters per capita, they have more programs and projects to mitigate these negative impacts than we do.

Sustainability advocates:

• smarter use of existing resources;
• improve upon efficient use of them;
• find alternative means (new technology, biofuels, low emission, alternative sources of energy, alternative means of transport, etc);
• limit the damage to these sources (toxins in natural water, poisons in soil, logging of our “lungs”, increasing amount of trash/landfill).

Already there are financial institutions that are looking into responsible investments into projects/schemes that go toward this philosophy.

At the government level, the Ministry for Energy, Green Technology and Water has already started looking into public policies that bring about environment-friendly initiatives; with the launch of Greentech : 1 Identity and the resulting working committees and task forces.

As an airline, with fuel being the biggest cost component (and thus all efforts have been invested in bringing this cost component as low as possible) the other areas we can focus efforts on are our utility use (water and electricity), to a large extent the non-airplane assets (ground vehicles), procedures (flight management, turn-around times, taxiing).

On a personal level, and either toward the (or any) company or toward our environment, we can also practise these similar philosophies. As you know, already there are supermarkets with their No Plastic Saturdays, some who charge for the use of plastic bags, shopping centres that have recycling bins to segregate waste. Not only will reducing waste and being efficient save you money, your children will see this as the normal learned lifestyle that will only become their natural habit as adults later on in life.

Even if you don’t subscribe to climate change or sustainability, you have to agree with what you have read about limited resources- even in our own backyard: That even for Malaysia, we will become a net oil importer in the not too distant future.

One of the presenters was Dr. Philippe Bonnefoy, who gave us both the scientific research findings as well as the business implications, or justifications of why the aviation industry has been doing all these decades.

I just wanted to show you some of the grabbing facts and figures that are quite daunting.

Historical and future trends

The sum of all aviation parts

I would like to draw your attention to the second slide above.

After being blown away at first glance of that formula, but taking the time to examine each part of the formula it started to make sense to us- it was a summation of all parts of the aviation industry.

If you cannot see it properly, what is written in blue, from left to right, are:
“Demand (passenger traffic)”;
“1/average load factor”;
“1/aircraft size (fleet mix)”;
“Empty mass”;
“Payload mass”;
“Flight range and speed”;
“Propulsion (spec. fuel consumption)”;
“Aerodynamics (drag/lift)”;
“Fuel properties (alternative fuels)”.

We were amazed and glad that such research measures and efforts are being undertaken by this most-developed country; in looking for ways of mitigating the impact of all of aviation’s activities.

* Note the reference to ICAT; which are MIT International Center for Air Transportation:

Massachusetts Port Authority- that manages sea- and air-ports

On the way there in the bus I did note these fans…

Fans on top of the building?

After the introductory presentations and meetings with the Massport officials on airport management, we were treated to a guided tour of their airport and the new terminal and facilities.

One of the highlights of the tour was their eagerness to experiment with alternative sources of electricity.

It was noted that they had also tried to harness wind energy for electricity, but somehow had stalled it whilst concentrating on harnessing that of solar. The joke was that those 6 fans from the above photo, had (only) managed to power a few PC’s!

And so with their focus on solar, this was what they had done, and done successfully insofar as achieving the power levels desired.

They call these the “solar trees”, and rightly so.

Solar trees on the carpark rooftop

A closer look at a solar tree

On the top deck of their multi-storey carpark, were these solar trees, all 3 rows of them, spanning the whole length of the building.

In our tropical Malaysia with year-round sunny days, with the right investments and attitudes towards conservation and alternative energy I believe this is an example that we ought to follow, for all types of buildings and administration. And I don’t mean small panels for token’s sake. To really harness solar energy for real use in buildings, dedicated budgets and physical space must be allocated for real returns- not just enough for powering a few PC’s!

If serious considerations are given, I believe we too can emulate such an initiative and set examples for other locals to follow.

The program is under the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, US Dept of State.

Under the US’s foreign policy, the program’s basic intention is to foster mutual understanding between the US and other countries, through educational, professional and cultural exchanges. The visa under which the Malaysian delegation was issued is a “J1” type, specific for exchange programs. In this case its duration is only 30 days (unlike a tourist’s that is typically of 10 years’ duration).

The topic of Aviation and the Impact on the Environment is a new one for the organisers, and Malaysia was the first country the above authorities have identified and invited for this exchange and topic. The organizers had researched current initiatives and relevant topics related to the aviation industry, and had contacted and organized the respective authorities to meet with the delegation for sharing presentations, practices, and discussions; and also for tours of relevant facilities, such as engine manufacturers, airports, and environment-related research facilities. The Malaysian delegation is very pleased and honoured by this face-giving gesture and time accommodated by these high level officials. The hospitality showed by these officials was akin to that accorded to their best customers, even though we were only visitors.

Along with the above meetings the program had also factored in cultural experiences, such as dinner with host families, allowance for (where possible) events, museums and tours, as well as for the practice of tipping porters and taxi drivers during our various journeys.

Photo was taken at our visit to the VOLPE centre in Boston.

Incidentally, following very closely a few days behind ours is the delegation from Thailand, also under this same arrangement and topic.

More articles to recap this trip and the environmental topics, in coming days…