Image courtesy IBA
 
Following the launch of the CEC in March 2021, IBA consulted with over 100 companies from all aviation sectors to understand their current and future needs for carbon reporting and analysis. This has enabled IBA to enhance its platform with new functionality that specifically addresses the requirements of current and prospective InsightIQ customers across the aviation industry and beyond.

 
IBA’s InsightIQ version 1.6 now enables users to build and compare scenarios for real and hypothetical fleets – providing the most accurate analysis of airline and competitor emissions. The InsightIQ update also allows users to forecast reductions in fleet carbon emissions utilising the CEC – the world’s most advanced and accurate commercial aviation carbon emissions tracking model.
 
This latest InsightIQ upgrade now also provides IBA’s aviation intelligence in Japanese, Mandarin and Chinese. InsightIQ is the first and only aviation data programme currently available to offer these global translations, with additional languages to be added in the coming months.
 
InsightIQ’s new features now enable professionals across all sectors to access a comprehensive range of new insights. These include:
 
For Aircraft Lessors:

• Demonstrating to investors, banks and operators how their fleet renewal programme will positively impact their carbon footprints
• Understanding the quantum of offsets required to reduce carbon emissions by specific amounts
• Providing independent metrics to support green financing and access lower costs of capital

For Banks:

• Reporting on carbon emissions within their loan books and modelling new deal impacts on their portfolio
• Meeting reporting requirements and loan monitoring for ESG compliance
• Providing equity and credit analysts with a comprehensive market overview including per airline and lessor comparisons to evaluate ESG considerations

For Airlines:

• Modelling fleet scenarios to understand and forecast the emissions impact from fleet evolution and emerging technology
• Sense checking sustainability reports and utilising the CEC as the independent basis for reporting for smaller airlines who don’t have their own reporting capability
• Benchmarking against peers using a consistent, independent and accurate methodology

For Aviation Investors:

• Evaluating and demonstrating carbon emissions from their investments
• Monitoring annual investments for ESG compliance and checking actual performance compared to management stated intentions
• Providing deal specific carbon information, alongside benchmarking and assessment

This upgrade to InsightIQ provides the industry’s latest and most accurate CO2 emissions tracking to date. This has been illustrated by recent data from InsightIQ’s Carbon Emissions Calculator (CEC) that highlights trends in overall CO2 emissions reductions at International Airlines Group (IAG).
 
CO2 emissions data from InsightIQ’s CEC was on average accurate to operator figures with an average variance of just 1.28% in 2018 and 2019.
 
IBA’s latest figures show that IAG achieved a 12.3% reduction in carbon emissions across the entire fleet between 2019 and 2021 on a per-seat per-mile ‘PSPM’ basis. This represents a strong performance compared to a global CO2 reduction of 2.3% in the same period. The global CO2 PSPM average in September 2021 was measured at 145g, whilst IAG’s measured at 144g. IBA’s CEC also demonstrates how British Airways has seen a 26.2% reduction in CO2 emissions on transatlantic flights since 2019, making BA the second most improved airline in the reduction of CO2 emissions from transatlantic flights globally.
 
Ian Beaumont, Chief Executive Officer of IBA, said: “Our clients need to show direction of travel and be able to confidently project the impact of fleet retirements and new aircraft coming into service. The CEC now not only tracks historical emissions accurately but also allows clients to project future emissions and model different scenarios. Being able to provide a clear message on the path of future emissions is key to communicating with their stakeholders.”
 
IBA’s upgrade marks the sixth set of enhancements to the InsightIQ platform since its launch in November 2020. Since then, IBA has seen accelerating subscriptions to the platform, from leading organisations in the aviation and related industries including Societe General, AVIOCAP, Floreat, CDB Aviation and many more.
 
Beaumont added: “These CEC enhancements show our commitment to continued InsightIQ development as we build in our clients’ wish list for new and unique functionality in a single, integrated, web-based package.”