The Fight Must Go on to Protect the EU's Right to Continue with Its Own Aviation Emissions Scheme

by Jeff Gazzard (European GreenSkies Alliance/GreenAir Online) Over the next couple of weeks, the United Nations’ International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) will be holding its 39th Assembly in Montreal. One of the key items up for discussion/agreement/stonewalling (take your pick!) is the development and implementation of a Global Market Based Measure (GMBM) to try and control and reduce civil aviation’s growing use of fossil fuel via the use of a price mechanism that includes the cost of CO2 emissions in airline ticket prices – the practical embodiment of the ‘polluter pays’ principle, writes Jeff Gazzard.

Why is this important? GreenAir Online readers, policymakers and those with an environmental responsibility across all sectors of the aviation industry, finally realise that the huge and continuing growth of flight kilometres, based on the consumption of ever-increasing volumes of tax-free kerosene as a fuel, produces a significant climate change impact.

After years of campaigning, policy development, consultations, phoney PR wars and obstructive legal action, the European Union and its parliament voted in July 2008 to extend the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) to aviation. The vote was carried by 640 votes to 30. In my view it wouldn’t have been possible to have sent a stronger message to the entire aviation industry that the game was up!

With free allowances, complex MRV arrangements, reasonable quality carbon credit availability, all-outgoing flight coverage, new entrant capacity, significant penalties for non-compliance, permanent review and policy development/revision opportunities, open public access to performance reporting and with both Parliament and the European Commission’s (EC) Climate Action Directorate General willing to engage positively with all parties, the policy was a model framework. Not perfect, but capable of producing something workable and potentially toughened over time.

Of course, those paragons of accepting the will of the European Parliament – the global aviation industry – predictably went collectively nuts at this perceived threat to their very existence, mounting an even more aggressive campaign in what to date has proved an overall futile attempt to destroy the Aviation EU ETS.

Let’s be clear: the entire industry despises the EU emissions scheme precisely because the free allowances will likely disappear over time, the cap will tighten and the unit cost of both carbon allowances within the scheme and their supply will likely rise and tighten too. The involvement of environment ministries means the industry’s symbiotic relationship with transport ministries and aviation regulators is also significantly watered down. The IATA/ICAO CNG project is simply a fig leaf of business-as-usual greenwash. READ MORE / MORE