20 February 2008 - Including aviation emissions in the EU’s much-feted Emissions Trading Scheme could be a step in the right direction - but the terms just aren’t tough enough, according to Caroline Lucas MEP in The World Today, Chatham House.

With proposals on the table to include aviation in the European Union’s Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), Gordon Brown seems to think he’s justified in quietly omitting any mention of aviation in the UK Government’s Climate Change Bill. Yet in truth, as they are currently designed, the EU proposals will make little impact on aviation emissions at all, especially since the Council’s common position, which was agreed upon back in December, succeeded in weakening the already disappointing propositions from the Commission.

It doesn’t take a Nobel Prize winner to work out that the only way this kind of trading can possibly reduce aviation emissions is if there is a sufficiently rigorous initial allocation, combined with tough limits to the amount of additional permits aviation is allowed to buy from other sources (for example, from other industrial sectors, or projects abroad). Without such limits, airlines will simply pay their way out of trouble, continuing with their own damaging ‘business as usual’ approach at the expense of other industries.

According to the Commission’s own figures, the proposals would mean that by 2020, instead of growing by 83% under a do-nothing scenario, aviation emissions would still grow by an extraordinary 78%. And since the effect of the scheme would be to add only a maximum 9 euros to the price of a ticket, it’s hardly surprising that it will have almost no effect on aviation demand. By the same date under the proposals, instead of growing by 142%, demand is still predicted to grow by a staggering 138%. If that’s global climate leadership, I wouldn’t want to see climate complacency.

The Council’s level of ambition has so far proved woefully inadequate, so the Parliament’s role in trying to strengthen the Commission’s ideas has been all the more important. The outcome of the Parliament’s first reading was the first faltering step in that direction. Instead of allowing aviation to receive all the permits for free - granting them the potential for huge windfall profits - MEPs agreed that they should at least pay for a quarter of them (Greens argued for 100% auctioning, but were outvoted). We strengthened the provisions on the initial allocation of permits (though not nearly enough), and ensured that a provision for a so-called "multiplier" was included.

A multiplier essentially recognises that the part played by aviation in climate change is far greater than just its CO2 impact. The water vapour, nitrous oxide, sulphate and soot particles emitted by aeroplanes mean that flying is at least twice as damaging to the climate as its CO2 emissions alone would suggest.

Crucially, a Green amendment was also passed to place at least some restriction on the amount of permits the aviation sector can buy from other sources. This is important, since without it, airlines will simply pay their way out of trouble, continuing with their own damaging business as usual, at the expense of other industries.

While some economists claim that as long as emission cuts are happening somewhere in the economy, it doesn’t matter where, their argument overlooks at least two important points: first, that aviation’s non-CO2 impacts are not accounted for in the scheme, so that the net effect of aviation emissions is more damaging than those from most ground-based sources.  And second, that the longer we postpone effective action on constraining aviation growth, the more difficult it will be for people to change their habits.  Allowing the sector to grow further before applying the brakes will also increasingly lock people into air-travel dependent lifestyles and make it harder to act to reduce demand in the future.

If there was any doubt as to the need for a clampdown on the sector, it has been calculated that if aviation is allowed to grow at current projections, it will account for the EU’s entire carbon budget - across all sectors - by 2045. I’d call that a major problem.

Whether the more progressive elements of the Parliament’s vote survive through the next stage of compromise with the Council is frankly doubtful. Essentially, much of this is fiddling while the planet burns, as governments argue over whether they really dare take steps to constrain the growth of aviation.

This weak approach doesn’t stop the industry complaining. A predictable array of airline representatives have trouped out to criticise and condemn aviation’s inclusion in the ETS. According to Sylviane Lust, director-general of the International Air Carrier Association, for example, "the Parliament’s punitive design of the ETS scheme would damage the aviation sector beyond repair.”

Strangely, she didn’t mention that international aviation is not covered by the  Kyoto Protocol; nor that the sector has been quietly omitted from the world’s first climate change bill. Nor that the world’s airlines currently enjoy a complex array of tax breaks and hidden subsidies - worth more than £9bn in the UK alone - which are long outdated and totally incompatible with global climate goals.

We shouldn’t think that we can solve the problem just by including aviation in the ETS. Unless we manage to comprehensively tighten the design of these proposals during the second reading, there is a real danger that they will be thoroughly ineffective in tackling aviation emissions and worse, may compromise the functioning of the scheme for other sectors.

ENDS

You can also find Caroline’s article in The World Today here.