DAE Publishes Its 2021 ESG Report

Dubai Aerospace Enterprise (DAE) Ltd announced the publication of its second annual Environmental, Social, and Governance (“ESG”) Report, for the year ended December 31, 2021. The report includes both DAE Capital and DAE Engineering, marking the first fully consolidated report on DAE’s environmental, social, and governance disclosures. The ESG report is prepared under the guidance of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) Standard. Limited Assurance has been provided by KPMG on certain metrics reported within DAE’s ESG Report. KPMG’s independent assurance statement is available within the ESG Report.

Commenting on the report, Firoz Tarapore, Chief Executive Officer of DAE, stated, “We continue to work with our stakeholders to ensure that our reporting and disclosures are relevant and transparent, and to further embed ESG risk management into the vernacular across the Company. Our sense of responsibility and commitment to ESG leadership in the aircraft leasing community is unwavering. The actions we are continuing to take ensure that we are closely aligned with our shareholders, investors, employees, and other stakeholders in the ever-accelerating transition to a truly decarbonized economy.

We are continuing to see a growing trend among our customers and investors who recognize their responsibilities in decarbonization efforts, and we are deploying our capital in ways that support these developments.”

In this ESG Report, we underpin our alignment to the Paris Climate Accords, the UAE Net-Zero by 2050 Strategic Initiative, and the Fly Net Zero pledge to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050.

2021 Performance

• We received our inaugural ESG Risk Rating of 14.1 from Sustainalytics and were awarded ‘ESG Industry Top Rated’ and ‘ESG Regional Top Rated’ accreditations from Sustainalytics for 2021;
• We published our ESG Policy and Stakeholder Engagement Policy on the Governance Section of our website to provide additional transparency to key stakeholders;
• DAE achieved 11 of the 12 2021 KPIs that the Company set when publishing its inaugural report, opting to delay policy introduction on carbon offsetting to 2022 to allow for additional consultation with employees and travel partners.

Environmental Stewardship

• Our Scope 1 and Scope 2 GHG emissions amounted to 1,504 tons of CO₂ equivalent in 2021 (2020: 1,281), of which 170 tons of CO₂ equivalent in 2021 (2020: 77) were attributable to DAE Capital, all of which were Scope 2 in both periods. We migrated to an external carbon emissions monitoring tool to ensure that we have a more accurate understanding of our fleet’s gross emissions;
• We published our sustainable electricity framework to support our migration to green energy consumption across our global footprint;
• We grew our proportion of next-generation, fuel-efficient aircraft in our fleet to 39%.

Social Responsibility

• We maintained industry-leading gender diversity among all levels of DAE Capital, with over 40% of DAE Capital’s employees being female, and 44% of DAE’s Leadership Team being female;
• We continued to support emerging market recovery and development, with 56% of our fleet on lease to airlines based in emerging markets at year-end 2021;
• We fully implemented a revised Technical Supplier Policy, which includes auditing key social factors, to enhance our review, appraisal, and performance evaluation.

Governance Excellence

• We added external EthicsPoint Hotline access to ensure that both internal and external stakeholders have multiple avenues to address any governance, compliance, or ethical concerns;
• We fully integrated DAE Engineering into ESG Assessments, to provide greater transparency and disclosures around DAE’s whole company emissions;
• We completed a global upgrade of IT infrastructure, increasing security and performance for our employees.

Working Together Towards Net Zero by 2050

• We have affirmed our commitment to supporting the Fly Net Zero pledge made by the airline industry to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, as approved by IATA at its October 2021 AGM;
• We continue to invest in new technology aircraft, deploying a further US$1.1 billion of capital across our owned and managed portfolios to acquire new aircraft that support our customers’ ongoing fleet transitions to lower-carbon technologies.