Since launching its first sustainability program in 2019, Clay Lacy Aviation has made remarkable strides in reducing its environmental footprint while continuing to grow its business operations across the USA.
Founded in 1968, Clay Lacy Aviation operates across four business lines — aircraft management, charter services, maintenance and repair, and fixed base operator services. The company has private jet terminals in Los Angeles, Orange County, and Connecticut.
Scott Cutshall, president of real estate and sustainability at Clay Lacy Aviation, says the company’s environmental focus began at an industry trade show. “I was walking around NBAA-BACE, and in the corner of a fuel booth, they had a vendor talking about sustainable aviation fuel and I got talking to them. That was my first exposure to the topic of sustainability and what was possible in the industry.”
This encounter led to the development of a comprehensive sustainability program built around three core motivations.
“We have three whys,” Cutshall explains. “The first one is we wanted to prepare for the future.
We felt that there would be regulation coming around environmental emissions. The second is we wanted to create a competitive advantage — we wanted to be ahead and be a leader in this area. And then the third is, we just feel it’s the right thing to do.
“If we can start to modify some of our actions today to reduce consumption of natural resources, to reduce unnecessary emissions, why wouldn’t we want to do that?” he says.
A triple bottom line
Clay Lacy’s sustainability strategy follows what Cutshall describes as a triple bottom line approach, balancing social, economic, and environmental considerations.
“There’s a social element, an economic element, and an environmental element, and we hold those three in tension with each other,” he says. “There’s a lot of things we could do to be more environmentally friendly, but they would harm the business from an economic standpoint. So, there’s a healthy tension there.”
This balanced approach extends to all facets of the company’s operations. For the environmental component, Clay Lacy focuses on reducing facility emissions and resource consumption. Socially, the company invests in developing its employees’ careers, supporting local communities, and bringing new talent into business aviation. Economically, initiatives must make business sense to ensure the company’s long-term viability.
One of the challenges Clay Lacy faced was how to measure environmental progress while experiencing significant business growth. The company developed innovative metrics to account for expansion.
“We’re a growing organization. In 2019, we were at around 80 airplanes; today, we’re at 160 airplanes that we manage,” Cutshall notes. “So how do you measure if you are reducing your environmental and carbon footprint, if you’re a growing organization?”
The company’s solution was to divide total emissions by three metrics, the square footage of facilities, the number of employees, and the number of managed aircraft. This approach allows the company to track efficiency improvements even as its overall operations expand.
The results have been impressive. Cutshall says, “Our facilities have grown by 51% while emissions per square foot have decreased by 26%. Employee count has grown by 145% where emissions per employee has dropped 54%.”
Client-focused solutions
An important distinction in Clay Lacy’s sustainability approach is how they handle aircraft emissions. As Cutshall points out, “We don’t own any aircraft. We manage them on behalf of individuals and corporations. So technically, the emissions from the planes are not Clay Lacy’s emissions, because we don’t decide when they fly.”
Instead of attempting to control these scope 3 emissions, Clay Lacy focuses on providing options to clients who want to reduce their environmental impact.
“For our clients, we wanted to offer solutions that, if they wanted to, they could reduce their emissions,” Cutshall explains.
“We started with a carbon offset program. When we started, we were one of the first 10 FBOs in the US to start selling a continuous supply of SAF,” he adds. “But it was optional to buy. And then we started generating complimentary emission reports for our aircraft owners.”
This approach extends to charter clients as well. “If a charter client would like an emissions report for all their charters for the year or the quarter, we can now generate that for them.”
Clay Lacy has implemented numerous sustainability measures throughout its operations. “We’ve installed solar panels on our facilities. We’ve transitioned all our ground service equipment to either renewable diesel or electric,” Cutshall says. While the transition to renewable diesel initially presented cost challenges, the company took a patient approach. “At first it was about US$1 more per gallon, which wasn’t financially feasible. So, we just monitored it, and it took about another year and a half for the price to come into about 10 cents.”
Other notable achievements include eliminating 227,280 plastic water bottles since November 2022, diverting thousands of pounds of rubbish from landfills through recycling and composting, sourcing one-third of all electricity from renewable sources, processing 40,000 pounds of e-recycling between 2019-2022, and providing EV charging at their Van Nuys facility, delivering 15,414 kWh of charging (equivalent to 6.7 metric tons of CO2 or 750 gallons of gasoline).
For aviation businesses starting their sustainability programs, Cutshall recommends measuring emissions first. “Step on the scale, find out what your scope one and scope two emissions are,” he says. “And then start to make a plan to do something. It doesn’t have to be everything. Just do something to start moving down that path.”
He advocates for widespread incremental action over comprehensive programs by a few companies. “I firmly believe that it’s about more organizations doing something, than a few organizations doing a lot. Because if every organization just did a little bit, the impact would actually be much larger.”
Business aviation’s small size creates networking opportunities, Cutshall notes. “Business aviation is not a big industry. Reach out for help. Chances are, everybody knows somebody that’s a bit ahead of them in the sustainability journey. Go ask them ‘How did you start? What worked for you? What didn’t work for you?’”
The company’s approach reflects a long-term commitment to environmental progress. “To be sustainable, you don’t get somewhere and say, ‘Okay, now I’m sustainable.’ It’s a never-ending journey.”
