No taxes, no emission reduction targets…

European airlines enjoy freedoms that other industries can only marvel at. Their fuel is not taxed and they are not obliged to meet emission reduction targets. But how long will these advantages last? With airplanes becoming an increasingly popular means of transport, concern has been growing over aviation's contribution to climate change.

But no one is sure exactly how big the problem is. British Airways (BA) says that if it cancelled all its flights to and from the UK, global CO2 emissions would be reduced by only 0.1%. Even if every airline in the world closed down, according to BA, there would be at most only a 3% drop in CO2 emissions.

"The way aviation is singled out in some debates as uniquely evil is unbalanced," says Paul Marston of BA.

"If you listened to some radio programmes and read some newspaper stories, you could be forgiven for

thinking aviation is the biggest single contributor to global warming."

BA claims to have improved fuel efficiency by 27% since 1990. But the benefits of technological developments are limited, according to Marston. "We would like to see fuel producers research more thoroughly into low emission fuels," he says.

BA also supports the idea of including aviation in the EU emissions trading scheme (ETS), through which industries buy and sell CO2 emission permits from each other.

But a report this month from T&E, a green campaign group, says the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) study, on which most industry emission claims are based, is misleading.

According to T&E, the industry estimates are based on old statistics, ignoring recent growth in the aviation sector and underestimating future increases.

T&E Director Jos Dings said it was misleading to focus only on CO2 emissions. "CO2 makes up only a quarter of the climate change impact from aviation," he explained. According to Dings this sort of estimation ignores the majority of climate change factors, such as cirrus cloud and nitrogen oxides (NOx).

The environmental group also claims that airplanes are mainly used by the rich, so price hikes to combat the environmental impact of aviation would not adversely affect poor people.

The European Commission estimates that including aviation in the ETS would mean an increase of an average €9 in the price of a ticket.

MEPs last month voted through a report from Green MEP Caroline Lucas, backing a separate ETS for the aviation sector, starting in 2008. The report also asked for a kerosene tax for airplanes.

The report says action to combat the climate impact of flights is needed because the rapid growth of emissions from aviation is undermining progress in other sectors.

The International Air Carrier Association (IACA), which represents 39 airlines mainly carrying leisure travellers, retorted that Lucas had ignored several vital concerns.

European airlines enjoy freedoms that other industries can only marvel at. Their fuel is not taxed and they are not obliged to meet emission reduction targets. But how long will these advantages last? With airplanes becoming an increasingly popular means of transport, concern has been growing over aviation's contribution to climate change.