Boeing is navigating turbulent times, grappling with a staggering $11.8 billion annual loss in 2024 while working to stabilize production. Despite these challenges, the company is investing heavily in sustainability, showing its commitment to reaching net-zero emissions and driving greener skies in the aviation industry.
Turbulence Ahead: Boeing’s Financial Freefall in 2024
Boeing faced a rough flight in Q4 2024, reporting a $3.86 billion net loss for the quarter and a 31% revenue drop compared to the same period last year. The company’s revenue stood at $15.24 billion, below analysts’ expectations of $16.21 billion. This marked Boeing’s sixth consecutive annual loss, with 2024’s total loss reaching $11.83 billion—the largest since 2020.
Production inefficiencies stemming from a nearly two-month machinist strike significantly affected operations. The strike halted work on most aircraft, causing delivery delays and contributing to a $3.5 billion cash burn for the quarter.
Boeing’s commercial aircraft unit revenue dropped 55% to $4.76 billion, while the defense unit’s revenue fell 20% to $5.4 billion, with $1.7 billion in pretax charges.
CEO Kelly Ortberg expressed optimism about Boeing’s recovery efforts despite these setbacks, emphasizing stabilizing production and focusing on core businesses. Ortberg specifically noted in a memo:
“While it was a challenging year, we are seeing encouraging signs of progress as we work together to turn around our company.”
Deliveries of Boeing’s 737 MAX increased, with numbers expected to reach the “upper 30s” in January 2025, up from just 17 in December 2024. Ortberg also highlighted plans to turn cash-flow positive in Q2 of 2025 after burning through $14 billion in 2024.
Despite financial mishaps, the plane maker is investing in its core businesses and working to address operational challenges. Efforts include certifying the Max 7 and Max 10 models, restarting test flights of the 777X, and addressing cultural and operational issues within the company.
Boeing remains focused on its long-term vision, despite the recent financial hiccup, which goes beyond balancing the books. The company is doubling down on sustainability efforts, recognizing the critical need to address its environmental impact while navigating challenges.
Greener Skies: Boeing’s Bold Sustainability and Net-Zero Roadmap
Boeing is a leader in aerospace innovation and a proactive advocate for environmental sustainability. The company has made significant strides in addressing climate change, aligning its operations with the goals of the Paris Agreement.
For the fourth consecutive year in 2023, Boeing achieved net-zero carbon emissions across Scope 1, Scope 2, and parts of Scope 3 (business travel) by combining renewable energy investments, conservation efforts, and verified carbon offsets.
Decarbonizing Operations: A Multifaceted Approach
Boeing prioritizes avoiding and reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions across its manufacturing sites and facilities. The company’s decarbonization strategy focuses on:
- Efficiency Improvements: Upgrading heating, cooling, and lighting systems to reduce energy consumption.
- Renewable Energy Procurement: Expanding the use of renewable electricity sources across its global operations.
- Carbon Offsetting: For emissions that cannot yet be avoided, Boeing invests in certified carbon offsets verified by top organizations. These offsets adhere to strict criteria, including independent verification and global registration.
By actively tracking emissions and energy usage, Boeing ensures that its operations remain aligned with a 1.5°C pathway. The plane manufacturer continuously monitors performance at its Core Metric Sites, which account for 70% of its operational carbon footprint, using validated data from utility bills and third-party assurance processes.
A Future-Focused GHG Strategy
Boeing’s “Avoid First, Remove Second” strategy emphasizes preventing emissions before they occur. This approach includes:
- Increasing the use of renewable energy sources such as sustainable aviation fuel (SAF).
- Investing in energy-efficient infrastructure and conservation practices.
- Transitioning to permanent carbon removal solutions to complement traditional offset projects.
RELATED: Boeing’s Big Move: Boosting EU Aviation with Norsk e-Fuel’s SAF
By 2024, Boeing plans to reduce its reliance on offsets for Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions, focusing instead on long-term carbon management strategies. However, offsets will continue to play a role, particularly for business travel emissions and supporting voluntary carbon markets.
Sustainability in Aviation: The Cascade Climate Impact Model
In May 2023, Boeing launched the Cascade Climate Impact Model to support the decarbonization of commercial aviation. Cascade is a comprehensive data modeling tool that evaluates various pathways to reduce aviation’s carbon footprint.
The tool considers factors such as:
- Fleet renewal with more fuel-efficient aircraft.
- Operational efficiencies like improved flight routing.
- The production, distribution, and use of renewable energy sources.
- Innovations in future aircraft designs and market-based mechanisms.
Cascade is available to the public, enabling stakeholders to explore the environmental impact of different aviation strategies. Founding members of the Cascade User Community, including NASA, IATA, and top academic institutions, contribute insights and feedback to enhance the tool’s functionality.
Boeing actively engages with the Cascade User Community to evolve the platform, ensuring it remains a valuable resource for guiding the aviation sector’s net-zero ambitions.
Carbon Offsetting: A Critical Component of the Transition
Climate change poses risks beyond carbon emissions, and Boeing is preparing for these challenges through a robust business continuity program. The company also recognizes the importance of carbon credits in tackling its environmental footprint.
Since 2020, Boeing has voluntarily offset emissions from its Scope 1 and Scope 2 operations, as well as Scope 3 business travel. The company’s offsets are certified by global verification organizations and meet rigorous criteria, ensuring their integrity and impact.
Boeing also incorporates the Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation (CORSIA) credits for business travel offsets. Moving forward, the company aims to diversify its offset portfolio with a greater emphasis on permanent carbon removal solutions.
Empowering Global Sustainability Goals
Boeing’s efforts to decarbonize extend beyond its own operations. By advancing renewable energy technologies, promoting SAF, and developing tools like Cascade, the company plays a pivotal role in driving sustainability across the entire aviation industry.
Through these initiatives, Boeing aligns with the commercial aviation industry’s collective goal of achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. By fostering collaboration among stakeholders, the airline uses these five strategies to help decarbonize aerospace.
Boeing’s journey through financial challenges and environmental initiatives reflects a company striving to balance recovery with responsibility. As it works to stabilize operations and embrace sustainable practices, Boeing aims to redefine its future while contributing to a greener aviation industry.
- READ MORE: Boosting Aviation Carbon Credits: ICAO Greenlights Verra’s VCS Program for CORSIA Carbon Market
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The accounting differences that decide whether your nature investment shows up in inventory, in BVCM, or nowhere at all.
The question reaches a procurement team about three weeks before the next sustainability committee meeting. Someone has read about insetting. Someone else has just signed off on an offset purchase. The CSO wants to know if the two are interchangeable. The answer is no, and the GHG Protocol Land Sector and Removals Standard is the reason why.
This article walks through what each term means at audit-grade specificity, what the standards actually say about how each gets counted, and how to decide which tool fits which target. The insetting vs offsetting question is one of the most-searched in corporate climate strategy, and one of the most poorly answered. By the end of this piece, you should be able to brief a committee on the difference without notes.
The two definitions, in plain English
Offsetting means buying carbon credits generated outside your value chain and retiring them against your residual emissions. The reduction happens somewhere else, financed by you, and the credit is the receipt.
Insetting means investing in emission reductions or removals inside your own value chain, typically with suppliers, where the reduction is directly linked to the products and services you buy. The reduction happens inside the boundary of your Scope 3 inventory, and the accounting treatment is fundamentally different.
The shorthand from the University of Oxford’s Nature-based Insetting Initiative is useful: insetting is what you do with the supply chain you have; offsetting is what you do with the supply chain you do not have.
What the GHG Protocol Land Sector Standard actually says
The GHG Protocol Land Sector and Removals Standard, finalised in 2024 after a multi-year pilot, sets the rules for how land-based emission reductions and removals enter corporate inventories. The Standard distinguishes between inventory accounting (Scope 1, 2, and 3) and project or intervention accounting (a separate methodology for crediting).
For insetting, the practical implication is that supplier-level interventions, when properly measured and attributed, can reduce your Scope 3 category 1 (purchased goods and services) emissions in your inventory. The reduction is not a credit retired against the inventory; it is a lower inventory number, period.
For offsetting, the credit is retired separately. It can be reported as a contribution toward a net-zero claim under the SBTi Beyond Value Chain Mitigation framework or as part of a VCMI Carbon Integrity claim, but it does not lower the inventory number.
A practical consequence: if your Science Based Target requires a 50% absolute reduction in Scope 3 emissions by 2030, insetting moves you toward the target. Offsetting does not. This single point of difference reshapes the procurement decision.
When insetting counts toward Scope 3 (and when it does not)
Insetting counts toward Scope 3 only when several conditions are met:
- The intervention must occur with an entity in your value chain.
- The emissions reduction or removal must be measured against a defensible baseline.
- The reduction must be attributed to your share of that supplier’s output, not double-counted with other buyers.
- It must follow the inventory accounting rules in the GHG Protocol Land Sector Standard, not the project accounting rules used to generate credits.
The most common failure mode is double counting. If your supplier sells the same reduction as a credit on the voluntary market and also reports it to you as a Scope 3 reduction, the math breaks. The Standard requires you to address this risk, typically by purchasing and retiring the supplier-issued credit as part of your inventory or by contractual provisions that prevent the supplier from selling the reduction twice.
When insetting does not count toward Scope 3: when the intervention sits with a supplier you do not buy from, when the baseline is not defensible, when the attribution is unclear, or when the documentation does not survive audit. Those cases default to Beyond Value Chain Mitigation, which is still useful but operates on a different ledger.
The procurement and supplier engagement question
Insetting is harder than offsetting. That is the unfashionable truth most buyers eventually confront. Offsetting is a transaction; insetting is a relationship.
To run an insetting program, you need supplier mapping precise enough to know which farms or facilities sit at which Scope 3 boundary. You need an engagement model that gets suppliers to participate, which usually requires multi-year commitments and shared economics. You need an MRV architecture that measures the right things and produces audit-ready documentation. And you need a contractual structure that prevents double counting and protects both sides.
The trade-off you receive in return is significant. Reductions count against your inventory rather than your residual. Supplier relationships deepen, which protects sourcing continuity. Yield and quality improvements often follow regenerative interventions, which reduces your input cost over time. And the regulatory file, under CSRD, CSDDD, EUDR, and the SBTi FLAG Guidance, is materially stronger.
Choosing the right tool for the right target
A practical decision rule. If your target is a science-based Scope 3 reduction and you operate in a FLAG sector or source FLAG commodities, insetting is the structurally correct tool. If your target is a net-zero claim that includes neutralising hard-to-abate residual emissions outside your value chain, BVCM via high-integrity offsets is the structurally correct tool. Most companies with material Scope 3 exposure need both, in different proportions, sequenced over time.
The sequencing matters. Insetting takes longer to stand up but produces a permanent reduction in the inventory. Offsetting can be transacted faster but does not change the inventory and now sits under tighter claim restrictions. Treat them as complementary tools with different jobs, not as substitutes. The Accountability Framework Initiative and the IUCN Global Standard for Nature-based Solutions both provide useful guardrails for the insetting side, with biodiversity, human rights, and benefit-sharing requirements that go beyond carbon math.
If you are mapping a Scope 3 reduction roadmap and need to scope which interventions count toward your inventory versus which sit in Beyond Value Chain Mitigation, the carbon and sustainability experts at Carbon Credit Capital can help you structure a nature-based supply chain investment program that fits your FLAG exposure, your target architecture, and your audit horizon. Schedule a consultation.
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