In case you missed the announcement just before Christmas, the European Commission has decided to include airlines in the European carbon emissions trading scheme (ETS) from 2011.  All internal flights within the EU will fall under the scheme from 2011, with international flights to and from the EU being included from 2012.  Why the year’s delay for international flights?  To allow further time to convince foreign governments (particularly the USA) to agree to participation in the scheme. 

Despite this good, but long overdue, news, some details of the proposal appear to be the result of compromise within the EC.   Each airline’s CO2 allowances will be based on their average emissions during 2004-2006.  As airline emissions are now 80%+ above their 1990 levels (the Kyoto baseline year), this proposal treats airlines very leniently.   Perhaps the EC is scared of the political fallout from large increases in airfares? 

Technorati Tags: airlines, carbon emissions, CO2, Kyoto

This entry was posted on January 2nd, 2007 at 14:53 (GMT) and is filed under EC Policy, Policy . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.