‘EU must go it alone on aviation emissions’

The EU should press ahead with making airlines trade allocations of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from 2010, even if it cannot get a worldwide agreement, according to the UK environment minister.

The assembly of the International Civil Aviation Authority (ICAO), the governing body of civil aviation, which meets every three years, broke up last week without a global agreement on including all airlines in an emissions trading scheme. But Hilary Benn, the UK environment minister, told European Voice that the EU should go it alone.

"It’s about Europe showing its leadership, showing it’s serious and showing it’s prepared to grapple with difficult issues," he said. Aviation was a difficult issue precisely because it was an international industry, he added.

Benn is the lead minister for climate change in the UK government and will be taking part in the UN-organised climate change talks being held in Bali in the first two weeks of December, which will be seeking an international agreement on regulating emissions after 2012.

ICAO members agreed at their assembly in Montreal to set up a group of senior officials to look into what measures the industry should take to deal with climate change. But it rejected EU proposals to oblige airlines to trade CO2 emission permits.

Benn said that it was "fundamental" to international negotiations to get on with plans to bring aviation into the EU’s existing emissions trading scheme (ETS), which currently governs major industrial users, such as the power companies, steel, cement and glass manufacturers.

Benn said: "It’s important we get going with bringing aviation into the emissions trading system as quickly as possible. This is why the UK is in favour of a 2010 start-date."

The European Commission proposed last December that emission permits would be needed from 2011 for flights between European airports and from 2012 for all flights starting or ending at an EU airport.

But European airlines are warning that if the EU unilaterally brings aviation into its ETS, it will put them at a serious disadvantage compared to their international rivals. Françoise Humbert of the Association of European Airlines said: "Whatever the geographical scope, we will have a big competitive disadvantage because it will affect all domestic carriers’ networks but only a small part of non-EU carriers’ networks."

She said that if the EU went ahead with bringing aviation into the ETS after the ICAO meeting in Montreal, it would mean "international disputes and retaliatory measures", as third countries would challenge EU rules which applied to their carriers. Humbert said that any scheme should be negotiated with other states to avoid jeopardising EU carriers’ competitiveness.

By pushing for a 2010 start date for including aviation in the ETS, the UK government is aligning itself with members of the European Parliament’s environment committee which voted on Tuesday (2 October) to oblige airlines to trade CO2 permits from 2010.

Benn said that it was essential that the US signed up to binding targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. "It’s very clear the largest economy in the world has to take on commitments to make binding reduction on emissions."

Benn said that linking up different carbon-trading schemes, such as those applying in some parts of the US, would not be enough. Reduction targets were essential, he said. "You can only have a functioning carbon market if the bigger economies take on these reductions," said Benn. Without a functioning carbon market there would be no flows of finance to the developing world to help them pay for low carbon development and new forms of energy, he added.

The minister said that he "genuinely welcomed" the fact that the Bush administration was "engaging with climate change and recognising its existence in a way it wasn’t in the past".

The EU should press ahead with making airlines trade allocations of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from 2010, even if it cannot get a worldwide agreement, according to the UK environment minister.