ICAO Council Gathers to Consider Important Decisions on Carbon Offset Eligibility under CORSIA

(GreenAir Online) During its 219th Session starting next week (March 2), ICAO’s governing Council is expected to make important decisions on the global carbon offsetting scheme for international aviation, CORSIA, which starts in 10 months’ time. Most notable is consideration by Council members of recommendations of the Technical Advisory Body (TAB) on emissions units, or carbon credits, to be eligible under CORSIA. The TAB has evaluated applications from 14 carbon programmes from the compliance and voluntary carbon market sector against a set of sustainability criteria adopted by ICAO and last month informally presented its findings to the Council. The decision on eligibility will provide the first test of the environmental integrity of the scheme, which is a cause for concern by some States, in particular Europe, and environmental groups.

EU States have met to discuss a joint position during the Council meeting and NGO Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) urged the EU to keep a united stance.

“As ICAO moves to decide which carbon credits airlines can use to comply with their international emissions limits, EU governments can use their collective diplomatic outreach to safeguard CORSIA’s integrity,” said Annie Petsonk, International Counsel for EDF.

Seven of the 36 members of the Council are from European States. “They can press ICAO to deliver transparency, bar old dubious credits and ensure each carbon credit is only counted once,” said Petsonk. “EU countries must show their commitment to stand up CORSIA with integrity. If it is peppered with bad quality, double-counted emissions units, its effectiveness will be fundamentally weakened. Our ability to tackle climate change will therefore have taken a backward step.”

EDF and other NGO groups represented at ICAO by the International Coalition for Sustainable Aviation (ICSA) recently sent a letter to all Council members urging them to come up with the right decision on eligible carbon programmes and units rather than rushing to reach a full decision.

Of the 14 programmes evaluated by the TAB, six have been recognised as having fully demonstrated eligibility, with a further two having conditionally demonstrated eligibility pending updates by the programmes to meet specific conditions. Two more are recommended for re-application in the second round of programme applications that is due to start next month, with the TAB finding the remainder not possible to assess, either because they were not considered to be programmes or were in the early stage of development.

Against fears of a shortage of units on the market caused by CORSIA demand, ICSA member Carbon Market Watch has analysed the availability of offset credits that airlines could purchase today if the three main voluntary programmes were deemed eligible under CORSIA by the Council. It found this supply would be sufficient to cover demand from airlines well into 2025 and leave plenty of time for new projects to be developed.

Meanwhile, Poland has submitted a paper for consideration by EU States at a meeting of the Environment Council next week (March 5). It proposes an end to the allocation of free allowances to airlines under the EU Emissions Trading System (EU ETS), which it estimates was worth around €800 million ($860m) in 2019. It said a main objective of free allowances was to protect the EU airline industry from carbon leakage but this no longer applied because of the reduction in the scope of the EU ETS to include only flights within Europe. READ MORE