Milestone
This is a formal process of negotiation to create a "social contract" for the transition. It involves bringing all stakeholders, especially labor unions, to the table to agree on core principles, such as a "job guarantee" for all displaced fossil-fuel-era workers.
If this "social contract" is not co-designed, the transition will be seen as something done to the workforce, not with them. This would lead to widespread labor disputes, strikes, and political resistance, creating decades of implementation delays.
Scenario
Optimising together
Context Factor
A fair, equitable, and human-centric transition that ensures public trust and a fully integrated future workforce.
Timeline
Short term
PESTEL
Empower global institutions with a binding mandate for the net-zero transition.
This action involves convening member states to formally grant key bodies (e.g., ICAO) binding regulatory and enforcement powers, moving them beyond their current advisory-only status to create a single, level playing field.
Read moreDemonstrate 'Just Transition' principles in all major industrialization projects.
This means applying the "social contract" (from the Short Term) to real-world projects. It involves ensuring that all new 'gigafactory' and 'airport retrofit' projects adhere to the agreed-upon principles for local hiring, retraining, and community benefit.
Read moreMeasure not yet developed by WP3. To be further detailed after 1 dec in future iterations.
Financial incentives to use the most sustainable travel option provides positive incentives to shift passenger behavior. This measure also indirectly motivates (air) transport operators to improve the sustainability of their offerings.
Part of the funds derived from taxations or market based measures can be used to co-invest with the travel industry in sustainable technological innovation. This helps airlines to offer sustainable travel options with a good passenger experience to a wider demographic including grey nomads, travel fanatics and ‘bleisure’ travellers. Airlines can then shift their business models from volume driven to (sustainable) value driven travel.
Multi modal journeys provides positive incentives to shift from a single (unsustainable) mode towards a more sustainable mix of transport modes.
As a multi-modal ecosystem matures, reliability and flexibility needs to be increased. After the basic infrastructure is in place and proven, an (AI-)orchestrator should be added so more complex itineraries can be planned and managed during disruptions. The improved reliability and flexibility opens up multi-modal journeys for a wider selection of travel persona’s: e.g. grey nomads, business travelers, and visiting friends and relatives. The most demanding personas are likely to be families and travelers with disabilities over concerns in the reliability and predictability of the system.
Promoting the coolness of sustainable travel aims to shift travellers to a more sustainable mode of transport and/or aims to let travellers reduce their amount of travel(-kilometres) by promoting attractive, sustainable alternatives (carrot).
Assuming the availability of attractive travel options that happen to be sustainable would lead to a corresponding market desire. As the sustainable options get rolled out additional regulation and taxation should help with the scale up. This includes offering an improved passenger experience to target a wider demographic. In addition, marketing can increasingly focus on the value proposition. When the sustainable offer becomes more mature, other persona’s such as grey nomads, ‘bleisure’ travellers and all-in convenience travellers can be targeted.
A market cap and trade system introduces a (mostly) negative incentive to avoid emissions. Indirectly this could motivate (air) transport operators to improve the sustainability of their offerings.
After approving a EU wide cap and trade system, the system should be implemented and enforced by the appropriate (trans-)national governments. This can start with specific origin destination pairs or geographical area. The larger the coverage area of the system, the larger emission reduction potential will be. Also the fairness of the system increases levelling the playing field for international competitors (such as airlines). After implementation, (air) travel operators will have to reduce their emissions and alter their pricing accordingly. Travel personas who are price sensitive, not tied to a specific location, and/or travel the most distance are affected the most: these include the younger generation and all-convenience travelers first.
"Under the principle of “No Country Left Behind,” we understand that the spirit of collaboration and integration for compliance with CORSIA is fundamental" (2025 ICAO Environmental Report, p. 220)
"Many developing countries hold significant potential for SAF development and production, and this can support their local economic development." (2025 ICAO Environmental Report, p. 289)