If you’ve ever used Google Flights to buy plane tickets, you might have noticed a green symbol telling you which flights have less greenhouse gas emissions.

These flights are the result of a Google algorithm that predicts per-passenger carbon emissions. And there are two planes that pop up over and over again in the results: One is the European Airbus A320neo, and the other is the Boeing 737 Max 9.

The 737 Max 9 is now infamous for an incident in January, when the door blew off an Alaska Airlines flight, exposing passengers to the outside air at 16,000 feet. The culprit was several bolts that hadn’t been attached, according to the preliminary findings of several ongoing investigations.

This isn’t the first time Boeing has made headlines with the 737 Max; a line of aircraft it originally promoted as “cleaner, quieter, and more efficient.” In 2018, a Boeing 737 Max 8 crashed in Indonesia. Less than six months later, another 737 Max 8 crashed in Ethiopia. A combined 346 people died as a result, leading the Federal Aviation Administration and 40 other countries to ban the 737 Max from flying for nearly two years. By 2020, the 737 Max was back in the skies, where it remains, even following this year’s accident.

The 737 Max is a household name today because of these failures. But originally, Boeing wanted the plane to be seen as an eco-friendly option for consumers who increasingly desire  sustainable products.

So does this mean that so-called “lower emission” planes are inherently unsafe? Some conservative commentators would like us to think so. Shortly after the 737 Max 8 crashed a second time, the New York Post ran an opinion piece that claimed Boeing’s sustainability goals were to blame. “The warning from Boeing’s catastrophes is that climate ideology can have fatal consequences,” Miranda Devine wrote in an article headlined: “Eco madness may be reason for disastrous Boeing 737 MAX safety issues”.

This, however, is “a completely boneheaded take on the Max,” said Dan Rutherford, an aviation and sustainability expert with the International Council on Clean Transportation. “This is clearly a case where Boeing did not go far enough on the environment,” he said. Boeing had the capability to create a truly game-changing and safe, fuel-efficient aircraft. But instead, the company chose to cut corners on sustainable design and safety.

“Boeing’s strategy was bad for the environment”

The 737-Max was not the plane Boeing originally intended to make. In 2011, the company announced it was planning to develop an entirely new plane to replace its aging and fuel-guzzling 737 fleet. This new, more fuel-efficient plane would cost billions of dollars and take nearly a decade to make. But Boeing’s then-CEO said it would be worth it. “It's our judgment that our customers will wait for us,” he said.

Shortly after that announcement, however, Boeing’s CEO was proven wrong. The company’s exclusive customer, American Airlines, announced it was defecting to Boeing’s rival plane manufacturer, Airbus. And Airbus was not making new planes–it was putting new, more fuel-efficient engines on old planes. So in order to compete, Boeing quickly scrapped its plan. Instead, it too decided to put new engines on old planes. The 737 Max was born.

From a sustainability perspective, Boeing’s change in direction was disappointing, said Rutherford. While the more fuel-efficient aircraft engines were better for the planet than the older ones, a new plane, he said, would have delivered far more benefits.

“If you look at the technologies that can be used to improve the fuel efficiency and reduce emissions for aircraft, it's basically three big buckets,” he said. Manufacturers could have made the airframe lighter by using lightweight materials, improved the aerodynamics of the plane to reduce drag, and added more advanced engines. That “clean-sheet design”, as it’s known by the industry, would have used less fuel and produced less emissions. A new plane would also have been safer, both in design and because pilots would have been required to train on the new aircraft.

But a new design would have cost Boeing and the airlines far more money. So while the strategy may have been good for short-term profit, ultimately, “Boeing’s strategy was bad for the environment and for consumers,” Rutherford said.

Still, Boeing was bullish on marketing the 737 Max as an eco-friendly plane. “Customers tell us they want to improve profitability and fuel efficiency while reducing their environmental footprint," Boeing’s then-CEO Jim Albaugh said in a press release announcing the re-engining of the 737. "This solution meets all three of those needs."

And once accidents and tragedies began to plague the 737 Max—in large part because the new engines compromised the aerodynamics of the plane—the company’s sustainability marketing soared further. In a coordinated media push over a few short years, Boeing rolled out a new ESG department, hired a chief officer of sustainability, and published sustainability reports. Mike Sinnett, head of Boeing product development, told reporters at an event in 2021 that reducing greenhouse gas emissions had become a “requirement of entry” for the aviation market. That same year, Boeing held a conference in its flight test hangar in Seattle to showcase its environmentally-friendly products. The conference served as the debut for Boeing’s latest re-engined old airplane: the Alaska Airlines 737 Max 9.

What Boeing didn’t say, but was apparent to anyone in the industry, was that the company was still trying to compete with more successful rival Airbus. Airbus had just unveiled its own even more fuel-efficient engines one week prior, advertising them as part of the company’s commitment to “sustainability and decarbonization.” Boeing looked for opportunities to distinguish itself and recoup some of its losses. One of those tactics involved Boeing advertising an experimental, even more fuel efficient version of the 737 Max 9 dubbed the “ecoDemonstrator” to Glasgow, right before the United Nations met for its annual climate conference.

By 2023, the company was using even stronger language to describe its sustainability efforts. Boeing’s efforts “to advance environmental stewardship” are “underpinned by transparency at every level as we strive to make aerospace more sustainable,” it said in its annual report. 

But Boeing’s new passion for the environment wasn’t solely motivated by concern for the planet. Boeing’s chief sustainability officer Chris Raymond described the company’s ESG strategy as a reaction to the disastrous 737 Max. “We have to re-earn some trust and I think this topic was just one that was so important to our stakeholders,” he told Aerosociety last year. “I just look at what’s happened with the oil, gas and automotive industries and we certainly don’t want aerospace to fall into that perception.”

And of course, Boeing never would have undertaken a sustainability measure if it didn’t believe it could make a profit. “We have never implemented any sustainability project that did not have a positive return on investment,” Terry Mutter, Boeing’s former director of enterprise strategy, told Blue & Green Tomorrow. “Not only is it the right thing to do but it is the right thing to do for business.” 

Mutter’s remarks are a common refrain across industries, that competition will drive companies to do what’s best for the consumer—and therefore what’s best for the planet. But the 737 Max is an example of where competition actually led to worse long-term results. Because the pressure to prioritize speed over innovation resulted in a flawed product that claimed nearly 350 lives, and endangered hundreds more. The problem wasn’t that Boeing wanted to make a more sustainable plane. It was that Boeing used sustainability as merely a tool on its quest for profit. And the company, consumers, and the climate paid as a result.

Further reading:

• To ensure a safe climate, planes need to change. But we also have to tackle demand. According the International Energy Agency, “Technology innovation is needed across the sector, including in production of low-emission fuels, improvements in aircraft and engines, and operational optimisation. Demand restraint solutions will also be needed to get on track with the Net Zero Emissions by 2050 Scenario – to curb growth in emissions and ultimately reduce them this decade.”
  

• Does that mean we should feel really guilty about flying? There are folks who say you should, and folks who say you shouldn’t; you can read about both in this New York Times article from last year. Notably: “Air travel accounts for about 4 percent of human-induced global warming, and the United Nations warns that airplane emissions are set to triple by 2050. Planes are becoming more efficient, but our appetite for air travel is outpacing the industry’s environmental gains.”
  

• Are we any closer to getting truly sustainable aviation fuel? If you’re interested in what airlines are actually doing on this front, definitely read this February piece in Yale Environment 360. Notably: ”The rollout of SAF has been slow. In 2023, the aviation industry purchased only 500,000 tons, according to the International Air Transport Association (IATA), which represents 380 airlines. That’s twice as much as in 2022, but still only a minuscule 0.2 percent of the 286 million tons of fossil fuel combusted in planes that year.”

Catch of the Day: Alcachofa, feline friend of reader Phoenix, will never turn down the opportunity to nap in or around a sunbeam.

Want to see your furry (or non-furry!) friend in HEATED? It might take a little while, but we WILL get to yours eventually! Just send a picture and some words to catchoftheday@heated.world.