David Schaper: Hi. Thanks for taking my call. I appreciate you guys doing this, this morning. A couple of questions I had have been asked and answered. So I’m going to kind of shift gears into something that might be coming out of left field. But the Biden administration announced last week a plan to get the transportation sector down to net zero emissions by the year 2050. I know the aviation industry has that goal as well. But how realistic is that really? And what is the cost to an airline like United to try to shift to sustainable aviation fuels to possible hydrogen-powered engines, that sort of thing?
Scott Kirby: Well, I haven’t seen the details of their plan. But, I think as a global citizen, it’s probably the most important thing that our generation needs to accomplish. I’m proud at United that we are not — we are the leading airline around the globe on real sustainability initiatives, and we are one of the leading corporations. We are focused at United, but I think it’s the right focus for aviation on a number of fronts. One, unsustainable aviation fuels, — by the way, the build back — the inflation Reduction Act has a number of provisions — regardless of what you think about everything else in the act, the sustainability provisions are meaningful, not just for our industry, but for everyone. And I think our transformative legislation makes it viable to start making investments in hydrogen and SAF.
And we’ve been the leader and we’ve got even more coming, but a lot of projects that were going to be hard to do all of a sudden start to pencil out, at least potentially pencil out. And so I think it’s driving — it is driving a lot of investment, and you can expect more from us on that. A lot of excitement in electric aircraft, what we’re working on there. And while I can’t replace everything because it’s never going to be big airplanes flying long distance, it will be a part of the solution. And then finally, carbon sequestration, I’m a climate change geek and have been for 30 years. And I used to have conversations like this. It wasn’t too long ago, even just a couple of years ago, and I would have to explain what the word sequestration meant.
It’s real progress actually that people know what it is now and there’s more investment. We’re here in Houston. Occidental is our partner in a sequestration project. They’re a leader on that — in that front. But a lot of others are moving into sequestration and the 45Q changes that happened in the Inflation Reduction Act are also really consequential for carbon sequestration. So I’m more encouraged today, I think, than I’ve ever been at the possibilities, but it’s a lot of hard work ahead, and it doesn’t happen overnight. I mean they’re not a magic silver bullet. But I’m also proud that United is leading, and we partner with everyone that would include the DOT, anyone that’s interested in doing the right thing and solving this in a real way, we’re happy to be partnered with.
David Schaper: Just a quick follow-up. What is the cost of all this, especially if governments, not just the United States but governments globally start imposing mandates to ship to alternative fuels that they cost a lot more to develop and use?
