Green Markets Day 2025 – SABA Spotlight: COP30 SAF Campaign

For this spotlight session during Green Markets Day 2025, Andrew Chen, Principal at RMI, was joined by Theye Veen, Co-Founder and CEO of SkyNRG to highlight the newly launched COP30 SAFc Platform through the Sustainable Aviation Buyers Alliance.  Learn more about the platform here.

See below for a full transcript.

ANDREW CHEN:

Just to introduce myself, I’m Andrew Chen. I’m the principal for aviation at RMI. Our team focuses on how do we accelerate net zero aviation. And one of the important roles that we play is making sure that we are taking a high integrity approach through the Sustainable Aviation Buyers Alliance, helping to build a market for SAF certificates.

I have the pleasure today to be able to announce a new campaign that Kim referred to earlier around COP 30 in Brazil this fall, this autumn. And we are really excited to be able to have a ready-to-go offering to help attendees of the world’s major climate conference put their money where their mouth is and show their commitment to the clean energy transition through the purchase of SAF certificates.

So we’re really excited to partner with SkyNRG on this opportunity. SABA acts to not only vet the offerings of SAF certificates, but actually make them available. So you will find, if you go to GMA’s website, a platform to actually click and purchase SAF certificates for your attendance to COP 30 this year.

We’re really thrilled to be doing this. And again, I’m very excited to be working with SkyNRG. We’ve been partners on all things SAF and SABA for many years.

Theye, who I’m joined by from SkyNRG here, has been leading the battle on the SAF market for so long, we might actually turn him into a fossil fuel at some point in the future here. But we’re thrilled. We’re thrilled, Theye, to have you here. It’s great to see you. I’m really, really pleased to share the stage with you. Anything you’d like to say about the announcement today and our campaign together?

THEYE VEEN:

Yeah, so I’m really happy that this is happening because in the end, it’s about us. We’re talking about this, but we need to go get into action. And there’s so many people flying to COP every year and also in Climate Week. People are flying all over the place. We need to take action.

So in the end, just go on the websites. There are several tools for COP. This is a unique experience together that we’re making this possible for all of the COP people. But use these tools.

I mean, airlines sell this. There’s several companies that do this. Use it because we need to have that demand going.

And I think congratulations to SABA as well. I mean, the work that you’ve done. Also RMI, we’ve been working for the last almost 15 years together. We need to keep on going.

So go to that platform and book your flight to COP, but also for the flight that you came over here, look at websites and go on these websites and pay a little bit extra, because we as an industry need to get that ball rolling, and not just the corporates, but also the individuals.

So I think it’s time for a break, right?

ANDREW CHEN:

Yeah, it is. Maybe just one more word on the offering.

This is our first time putting together a pre-vetted and actually option-signed offering for both scope one and scope 3 SAF certificates, so that means that if you’re flying or if anyone you know is flying private or in their own aircraft to COP 30, we can help you address the aviation emissions from that flight directly.

Or if you’re flying commercial, or what some folks call scheduled, the private jet folks call it scheduled. That’s an industry term. Then we can also assist you with a simple, easy to click platform.

Again, this is our first for us. It’s a, we think, a truly pioneering initiative and campaign. We’re not just looking at COP. We’re really excited to test this out, see what we can learn from this, and see how we can continue to apply a high integrity SAF approach to other events. So think, you know, there’s a number of conferences and things that happen yearly. We’re really excited to see how we can roll this out and scale this up.

And with that, I now get to release you into your networking break.