Climate Policy Engagement Analysis
Climate Lobbying Overview: In 2023-25, United Airlines was strategically engaged and exhibited both positive and negative engagement with science-aligned climate policy. While United Airlines supported sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) tax credits, the company has supported amendments to weaken sustainability criteria for SAFs under such policies. United is also a member of several industry associations with negative engagement on climate policy.
Top-line Messaging on Climate Policy: United’s 2023 Corporate Responsibility Report, accessed in July 2024, stated that the company supported the industry-wide 2050 net-zero emissions target. However, in the same report, United appeared to support government regulation in response to climate change with major exceptions, including that policies rationalize tax burdens, reduce unnecessary regulation, enhance competitiveness and are cost-effective.
Engagement with Climate-Related Regulations: In United’s 2024 Corporate Impact Report, accessed in May 2025, the company supported the SAF blenders tax credit and the Clean Fuel Production Credit, alongside SAF tax credits in Illinois and Colorado. United CEO, Scott Kirby, also supported the federal SAF tax credit in a November 2023 Politico article. According to a November 2023 Cirium report, United supported federal SAF tax credits, alongside tax credits proposed in Minnesota, Colorado, Illinois and Washington.
However, in a November 2023 joint letter, United appeared to support weaker SAF sustainability criteria under the SAF blenders tax credit. Through the SAF Coalition’s July 2024 regulatory comments, United was unsupportive of a combination approach to award climate-smart agricultural practices (which requires more than one practice to be used to qualify for emissions reductions) and ‘overly prescriptive’ verification. In addition, through the ‘SAF Coalition’, United supported changes to the Clean Fuel Production Credit under the ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ to remove indirect land use change from carbon intensity calculations in a May 2025 article. The ‘SAF Coalition’ echoed support for the Clean Fuel Production Credit under the ‘Big Beautiful Bill’, including in a May 2025 press release and a July 2025 X post. In its 2023 Corporate Responsibility Report, accessed in July 2024, United further appeared to support the production of SAFs from ethanol and fuel crops, without acknowledging land-based trade-offs.
United also supported the Farm to Fly Act, a measure that promotes aviation fuel produced from crops, in an April 2024 joint letter, without specifying the need for stringent sustainability criteria to protect land-based carbon stores. Through the ‘SAF Coalition’, United echoed support for the Farm to Fly Act in a March 2025 press release.
In its 2024 CDP response, United disclosed that it directly advocated for a 2019 baseline for the Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation (CORSIA), the weakest baseline considered, instead of the more ambitious, adopted baseline of 85% of 2019 emissions.
Position on Energy Transition: United’s 2024 Corporate Impact Report, accessed in May 2025, supported the increased use of SAF, alongside a switch to synthetic fuels in the longer-term.
In its 2024 10K report, published in January 2025, United appeared to oppose regulations that ‘require airlines to reduce flights or impose the cost of transition to low-carbon alternatives disproportionately on airlines’. Furthermore, according to a July 2023 KLM press release, United opposed Amsterdam’s Court of Appeal’s approval of the flight cap at Schiphol airport and launched legal action against the Court. United Airlines also endorsed the ‘Big Beautiful Bill’, which proposes to repeal or phase out many of the Inflation Reduction Act’s climate incentives and facilitates the build-out of fossil fuel infrastructure, on a May 2025 White House webpage.
Industry Association Governance: In 2022, United published its first review of its industry association memberships and their alignment on climate change policy. The review does not appear to have been updated since. United has board-level membership to the US Chamber of Commerce, Airlines for America (A4A) and International Air Transport Association (IATA), all of which are strategically and negatively engaged on climate policy, alongside Business Roundtable, which has both positive and negative engagement on US climate regulation. United did not identify any areas of misalignment with its industry associations.
A detailed assessment of the company’s corporate review on climate policy engagement can be found on InfluenceMap’s CA100+ Investor Hub here.
InfluenceMap collects and assesses evidence of corporate climate policy engagement on a weekly basis, depending on the availability of information from each specific data source (for more information see our methodology). While this analysis flows through to the company’s scores each week, the summary above is updated periodically. This summary was last updated in Q3 2025.