INTERVIEW: Boeing backs dual CORSIA-SAF offset push amid ASEAN supply crunch

Boeing sees CORSIA carbon offsetting and sustainable aviation fuel investment as complementary decarbonization levers rather than competing priorities, arguing that the credibility of the compliance carbon market carries implications well beyond Southeast Asia's borders, a senior Boeing sustainability official told Platts in an Interview.

Speaking to Platts at the MYAero Sustainable Aviation APAC Symposium in Malaysia, Dr. Kimberly Camrass, head of sustainability APAC Boeing, said a newly released report co-authored with climate investment firm GenZero and carbon market analytics provider Abatable, with input from the ASEAN Secretariat, estimates the region could unlock between $1.6 billion and $8.5 billion in economic value from CORSIA-eligible carbon credits over the next decade.

Currently, however, Association of Southeast Asian Nations accounts for just 7.1% of the eligible global supply, with only four projects across the entire region formally authorized for use.

Policy execution holdup

Camrass said the scale of the challenge lies almost entirely in policy execution rather than underlying mitigation potential. Global demand for CORSIA-eligible units sits close to 200 million tons in the scheme's First Phase, against roughly 36.6 million eligible units available worldwide as of early June, with ASEAN airlines alone requiring 17 million to 18 million eligible units through the period.

"It's not that the potential is not there, it's almost an administrative and policy unlock that we need to drive," Camrass said, noting that resolving the region's authorization bottlenecks could increase ASEAN supply eightfold. "The risk of not progressing with haste towards this emissions reduction through the various phases of CORSIA is something we have to acknowledge -- it is a real risk. But with coordinated government action, we can overcome those risks, and the opportunity then becomes quite immense, particularly for ASEAN."

SAF, offsetting move in parallel

On the relationship between CORSIA offsetting and SAF investment heading into the scheme's Second Phase from 2027, Camrass rejected the framing of the two as an either-or choice, describing them instead as parallel tracks moving toward the same destination.

"Sometimes we see these discussions framed as an either-or approach. We concur with the views of IATA and Neste that there's a dual urgency issue here in the short term we need to both work collectively to incentivize investment in SAF, but we also need to address supply and uptake on the offsetting side. I'd say they're railroad tracks rather than a bridge.

"They're working in unison towards a common direction, and both are things we can utilize today to meet the objectives of CORSIA by 2035," she said.

She added that where individual states choose to incentivize SAF uptake through policy, airlines will naturally lean more heavily on that lever, but ultimately carriers will make their own commercial decisions about which decarbonization tools to deploy and when.

54 projects stalled

Camrass pointed to one figure from the report as particularly significant: 54 CORSIA-aligned carbon projects across the region currently lack the Letter of Authorization needed to become eligible for compliance use.

Resolving that bottleneck, she said, would materially expand the pool of affordable decarbonization options available to airlines across ASEAN and crucially, offer a pathway for countries that may never develop meaningful domestic SAF production capacity.

"Not every country is going to be able to produce SAF, or should produce SAF," she said. "So it opens up options for a more diverse aviation decarbonization journey for other countries. Of course, we've got some countries like Vietnam that will be able to do both very successfully."

Camrass noted that nearly a dozen airlines from across the region including carriers from outside ASEAN participated directly in shaping the report, which she said reflects a structural advantage the region holds over other parts of the world: a regional framework capable of driving policy harmonization and reducing fragmentation across CORSIA and SAF simultaneously.