Boeing is looking for ‘Elon Musk engineers’ to help it go green, says the company’s first-ever chief sustainability officer

Good morning from Geneva.

Can aviation ever become sustainable?

Over the past few years, Boeing has had to answer this question at the same time as it tries to regain customers’ trust following the deadly crashes of two 737 MAX planes, which together killed 346 people.

That means Chris Raymond, the company's first-ever chief sustainability officer, has to keep an eye on safety as he deals with the sustainability question, he told me yesterday over the phone.

“You can’t have sustainable aerospace unless you have safe aerospace. Any solution that actually scales up, first, has to be technically possible," he said.

It's one reason why he believes that, if the aviation sector really is to reach its goal of hitting net-zero by 2050, so-called sustainable aviation fuels (SAFs) will be a major part of the solution.

“If the objective is to radically reduce carbon emissions by 2050, there will be a lot of airplanes–60% to 70%–looking a lot like the ones we fly today,” Raymond said. (Planes don’t require significant re-engineering to switch from jet fuel to SAFs, which emit much less CO2).

Electric planes can only carry the "lower end" of passenger volume, Raymond said, as the size and weight of current batteries make larger planes unfeasible. He also doesn't see hydrogen-fueled planes as being the solution. "There won't be a lot," according to the Boeing CSO, due to incompatible infrastructure, design challenges, and the lack of abundant, cheap, and green hydrogen.

On hearing these sober predictions, I wondered whether Boeing and other incumbents weren't like car manufacturers before the arrival of Elon Musk's Tesla: lacking both an outside-the-box vision and stratospheric levels of ambition.

Raymond assured me that wasn't the case.

"You have to advocate for 2050 targets. You also have to look for Elon Musk engineers who explore different ways that are not technically possible yet. And that’s what we’re trying to do," he explained.

Raymond acknowledged that sustainability is always part of the conversation with the new generation of talent, with no room for sophistry.

“[They] are educated on sustainability, whatever their discipline is. They’re more aware, and a lot of them are minoring in environmental science, and they are going to work for a values-based, purpose-driven company,” he said. "They sniff out" if you’re not serious.

Separately, read the latest piece from my colleague Jessica Mathews, which explores “what has quietly become one of the surest paths to an enviable job in Silicon Valley." The Stanford Review, a student newspaper founded by Peter Thiel, has become a talent factory for his and other Silicon Valley companies.

More news below.

Peter Vanham
peter.vanham@fortune.com
@petervanham

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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