Decarbonization & Strategy

Decarbonization Strategy & Decision System

Rebuilt Delta’s long-term decarbonization planning approach, modeling how operational efficiency, fleet renewal, sustainable aviation fuel, and market-based measures interact over time, while creating reusable tools for scenario analysis and climate-investment decisions.

A commercial aircraft taxiing at an airport

Organization: Delta Air Lines — Sustainable Skies Lab
Role: MBA Intern, Strategy & Sustainability
Timeline: Jun 2025 – Sep 2025
Focus: Decarbonization Strategy · Scenario Modeling · Climate Investment

The Challenge

Delta’s annual decarbonization glide-path update relied on fragmented data and manual rebuilding across teams and data sources. The process was difficult to audit, slow to update, and made scenario testing harder as new information became available.

My Role

Refreshed the decarbonization glide path, built base and stretch scenarios across operations, fleet, sustainable aviation fuel and market-based measures, and reorganized assumptions into a reusable planning system.

Outcome

Created a clearer decarbonization roadmap, a reusable SkyMap data pack, and a structured framework for evaluating climate-tech opportunities, enabling faster and more consistent decision-making.

Modeled the core decarbonization levers

Modeled how operations, fleet, and SAF shape the emissions curve

Built base and stretch scenarios for the major decarbonization levers and assessed how timing, deployment assumptions, and implementation risk affected Delta’s long-term emissions trajectory.

Operations

Earliest near-term lever
Quick payback and reliable execution
Requires a continuing pipeline of new initiatives

Near-term bridge

Fleet

Efficiency benefits compound over decades
Entry-into-service timing materially affects the trajectory
Aircraft configuration choices can shift the curve

Long-term slope shifter

Sustainable Aviation Fuel

Critical long-term lever
Modeled alternative ramp profiles rather than a simple linear assumption
Requires supply and price guardrails

Scale with discipline

Expanded analysis

Three levers, three distinct strategic roles

Operations — bridge while structural solutions scale

Operations can generate relatively near-term emissions reductions while fleet renewal and SAF require longer implementation periods. The major risk is maintaining a sufficient pipeline of viable efficiency initiatives over time.

Strategic implication: Protect proven operational initiatives while continuously developing the next generation of efficiency opportunities.

Fleet — small efficiency gains compound

Fleet renewal changes the slope of the emissions pathway. Improvements introduced through new aircraft can continue producing benefits over many years, making delivery timing and configuration decisions strategically important.

Strategic implication: Prioritize efficient configurations and align deployment decisions with their decarbonization value.

SAF — timing matters

SAF remains essential to long-term aviation decarbonization, but supply maturity and economics may not follow a simple linear ramp.

Strategic implication: Maintain procurement flexibility and use price and availability triggers as SAF markets develop.

Quantified the action gap

Identified when the glide path falls short

Compared modeled emissions after operational, fleet, and SAF improvements against the target pathway to identify when the remaining decarbonization gap was greatest.

Glide Path vs Target

Target pathwayEmissions before market-based measuresRemaining action gap

The largest remaining gap occurs before fleet and SAF reach scale.

Expanded analysis

The transition period is the strategic pressure point

What the model showed

The remaining action gap is concentrated in the transition period before fleet efficiency and SAF adoption become large enough to materially reshape the emissions curve.

Why this matters

Looking only at a final net-zero destination hides an important strategic question: what fills the gap while structural decarbonization solutions are still scaling?

Decision implication

Moving an emissions lever earlier can reduce the remaining gap disproportionately because the benefit compounds across subsequent years.

Glide Path vs Target

Target pathwayEmissions before market-based measuresRemaining action gap

The largest remaining gap occurs before fleet and SAF reach scale.

Target pathway

Ops + Fleet + SAF trajectory

Remaining bridge requirement

Market-based measures strategy

Designed market-based measures as a bridge, not the destination

Evaluated the role of market-based measures during the period before longer-term structural decarbonization levers reach scale.

Near term

Operational reductions

Transition period

Bridge remaining gap with market-based measures

Long term

Fleet + SAF increasingly drive emissions reduction

Strategy card

Laddered MBM Strategy

Quality guardrails and approved standards
Price and availability triggers
Carbon buffer for forecast uncertainty
Ability to shift spending as SAF economics improve

Expanded analysis

A flexible bridge with explicit guardrails

Principle 1 — Quality before quantity

Establish clear quality and verification guardrails for eligible instruments.

Principle 2 — Preserve optionality

Avoid locking the roadmap into one permanent bridge mechanism when relative economics may change.

Principle 3 — Use triggers

Adjust the balance between market-based measures and SAF as prices, availability and the size of the action gap change.

Principle 4 — Build contingency into the plan

Operational initiatives and fleet deployment decisions can provide additional flexibility if assumptions change.

This public case study excludes transaction-level information, counterparties, internal pricing thresholds, and procurement data.

SkyMap tool

Turned a yearly rebuild into a reusable planning system

Developed a reusable data and scenario structure so future glide-path updates could start from an organized, traceable base rather than rebuilding the analysis from scratch.

Before

Rebuilt from scratch
Manual handoffs
Low transparency

SkyMap Data Pack

Assumptions registry
Lever-level baseline data
Versioned scenarios
Built-in analytics

After

Update, not rebuild
Faster what-if analysis
More transparent review
Fewer errors

Expanded analysis

A public-safe view of the SkyMap architecture

Assumptions & Constants Registry

A centralized location for key model inputs and planning assumptions.

Lever-Level Data

Separate structured datasets for operations, fleet, SAF, baseline emissions and other major inputs.

Scenario Layer

Base and stretch assumptions can be changed without rebuilding the underlying model.

Versioning & Lineage

Makes it easier to understand what changed between planning cycles.

Analytics Layer

Supports faster what-if analysis and comparison of alternative pathways.

Update

Test

Compare

Review

Reuse

This representation explains the architecture without recreating confidential internal files or proprietary Delta data.

Climate-tech venture assessment

Built a structured framework for evaluating new climate-tech bets

Developed a two-stage process to consistently triage and compare climate-tech opportunities that differed significantly in maturity, technology and business model.

Stage 1

Knockout screen

Safety / certification pathway

Climate alignment

Technology maturity

IP / deployment constraints

Economic viability

Stage 2

Multi-factor assessment

Safety

Climate Impact

Economics

Feasibility & Maturity

Team & Governance

This public framework excludes internal investment thresholds, confidential scoring rules, company names, pipeline companies, and investment decisions.

Expanded analysis

From initial screen to leadership decision

Initial screen

Eliminate opportunities that fail fundamental deployment, safety, climate-alignment or viability requirements.

Structured assessment

Compare viable opportunities across common strategic dimensions rather than evaluating every pitch differently.

Decision artifact

Convert analysis into a concise scorecard and investment memo that captures opportunities, risks, assumptions and unresolved questions.

Leadership review

Use the common framework to make discussions more transparent and comparable.

Result: A more consistent way to compare fundamentally different climate technologies and turn subjective debates into structured decisions.

Impact

major decarbonization levers modeled

reusable scenario-planning system

venture-assessment pillars

Faster

scenario and investment decisions

Strategic takeaways

What the work made clear

01Near-term and long-term decarbonization levers play different roles.
02Timing can matter as much as total impact.
03Flexibility has economic value.
04The model is part of the strategy.
05Innovation portfolios need both rigor and optionality.

Next step

Have a problem worth structuring?

I take on a small number of projects at a time — usually where the question is still fuzzy and the stakes are not.

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