Aviation's Climate Challenge

EU takes aim at global airline emissions pact

One MEP denounces the carbon reduction scheme as ‘an absolute joke.’

This article is part of a special report called Aviation’s Climate Challenge.

Could a global effort to rein in the airline industry’s greenhouse gas emissions undermine the EU’s fight against climate change?

That’s what regulators in Brussels worry could happen as the United Nations takes on one of the fastest growing causes of global warming.

At issue is the so-called Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation (Corsia), which would require airlines to buy into forest-planting schemes or other efforts to suck carbon dioxide from the atmosphere if they pollute more than they are currently doing.

Some EU officials say the approach proposed by the U.N.’s International Civil Aviation Organization is not transparent enough, vulnerable to fraud and miscounting, and in any case doesn’t go nearly far enough.

Worse, it could derail the EU’s own efforts to force the industry to cut its greenhouse gas emissions.

“We can no longer rely on offsetting to deliver long-term climate goals,” Mauro Petriccione, the European Commission’s top civil servant working on climate change, said at a conference on international carbon markets. “The use of international carbon markets needs to reflect ambition. We cannot remain stuck in the past.”

Green skies ahead

Aviation accounts for about 2.5 percent of global CO2 emissions, and grew by 5 percent last year. But the sector has largely been left out of  global efforts to rein in rising greenhouse gas emissions.

Airline emissions are not covered by the landmark 2015 Paris climate accord. The schemes that do try to address the industry largely aim at keeping aviation emissions flat, even as emissions from other parts of the economy — power stations, manufacturing industries, cars — are required to cut back.  This means that the sector’s emissions will make up an ever larger share of global emissions.

The one place where the industry is required to cut back is in the EU. Since 2012, airlines flying within the European Economic Area are forced to buy permits covering 15 percent of the sector’s emissions under the Emissions Trading System — a bloc-wide carbon market. The EU has sought to expand the scheme to include international flights, but the effort was rebuffed in 2012 by major powers such as the United States and China.

Far from wanting to lighten these regulations, the political winds, as evidenced by last month’s European Parliament election, are blowing toward holding the industry to higher standards.

“It’s the most important fight we have to fight internationally,” said Peter Liese, the environmental coordinator for the European People’s Party, the parliament’s biggest group.

By 2024, the EU will also have to review whether to include international aviation in the ETS. European lawmakers are already gearing up to tighten the screws on airlines.

Leading environmental MEPs such as the EPP’s Liese now want to boost the number of emission allowances carriers have to buy from 15 percent to as much as 100 percent.

Free emissions allowances are “effectively a fossil fuel subsidy,” said Bill Hemmings, director of aviation and shipping with the NGO Transport & Environment.  “Why should the ETS provide a fossil fuel subsidy to the aviation sector? … It’s perverse that they don’t have to pay.”

‘Hot air’

Corsia, by contrast, takes a much lighter approach.

The scheme would cap airline emissions at an average of 2019 and 2020 levels, and by 2027 carriers emitting more than that would have to buy carbon offsets — although it’s still unclear who they’d buy those offsets from and who would regulate such a global program.

Corsia is backed by the aviation industry, which is keen on a global market-based measure that would avoid having to comply with a tangle of regional schemes. But the plan hasn’t found much favor among environmental activists or many European politicians.

The concern among EU climate officials and environmental campaigners is that Corsia will be full of loopholes.

That includes double-counting emissions savings, worries over whether regulators will stick to offsetting standards, and poor compliance rules. Another issue is whether the system will allow the sector to use surplus emission permits created under the 1992 Kyoto Protocol, the Paris Agreement’s precursor.

European Commissioner for Energy and Climate Miguel Arias Cañete warned last week that continued use of “substantial” amounts of Kyoto emission permits in global carbon market schemes “will reduce ambition or at least defer action for many years.”

There are also questions over the effectiveness of Corsia, which will be voluntary until 2027, and whether major polluters will opt in from the start. Signals suggesting China won’t join the voluntary phase has EU officials worried this could undermine the case for the U.S. to comply and leave Europe saddled with more onerous obligations than its rivals.

The European Commission has to make an assessment on whether Corsia is robust enough, once it’s started, to allay the bloc’s environmental concerns, and how the EU should apply it domestically.

“If Corsia is not more than a fig leaf, there will be lots of voices, not least in the Parliament, to say, ‘No, let’s not count it,” said a long-standing EU observer who was involved in aviation measures. “Politically, we back the scheme but we always left open that it should be meaningful.”

Some have already made up their mind.

“Corsia — that’s an absolute joke,” said Liese, adding the scheme doesn’t require emission reductions from the industry. “It’s just hot air.”

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