Airlines from all corners of the globe must get behind efforts in 2007 to create the economic instrument - emissions trading - that offers the most sustainable way for the aviation industry to grow and curb its environmental impact at the same time
It is a remarkable sign of the times that an airline should actually boast of its green credentials. UK low-cost regional flybe shouts about it from the rooftops in its advertising: "Flybe.com - the UK's low-fare, low-emissions airline." It is promoting the fact that its fleet of Bombardier Q400s burn half the fuel of a 50-seat jet. "A true five-star eco aircraft," it trumpets.
In environmentally sensitive Europe, flybe, along with other low-cost players and some network carriers, is taking a proactive stance on green issues. These carriers are recognising a groundswell of public opinion that aviation is a bad guy, a polluter. It is a movement that has gained little momentum in most other regions - for now. In many airline boardrooms the word environment never makes it onto an agenda dominated quite naturally by matters of profit and loss. It is just not a live issue.
This makes Europe's crusade to promote an economic solution to carbon reduction - emissions trading - hard to sell on a global basis. However, those that deny the need for a carbon trade risk being marginalised. The debate may not be raging in your country today, but rest assured, the green lobby and the need to address climate change is coming your way.
In a recent speech, Martin Broughton, chairman of British Airways, describes it as "absolutely central to carbon reduction...our critics claims that carbon trading is some sort of soft option for airlines - a cunning ruse for avoiding green taxes or for passing the buck to other sectors of the economy. These assertions are nonsense - and it is high time we said so."
Emissions trading is not an abstract thing. It offers a hard-edged economic method of delivering cuts in emissions for the lowest cost. "Carbon trading gives companies in all industries a simple choice: if you don't cut your emissions, you must pay for someone else to," says Broughton. "If that extra cost makes you uncompetitive, you face a very serious problem."
The European Commission (EC) wants to include airlines into its emissions trading scheme from 2011. Europe's airlines have been persuaded, many under duress, to back joining the plan in principle. As it stands, IATA estimates that in its first year, the cost to airlines involved with the scheme would be €2.9 billion ($3.8 billion), with more to come in subsequent years. This is equivalent to an extra 5% to the cost of a gallon of fuel at today's prices. If other regions followed the European example, IATA says the global cost would be roughly three times this number at €8.7 billion.
While the industry believes such numbers are too high for the scale of the scheme, it is the EC's idea to include flights from outside the European Union that has drawn most flak. Airlines from Asia and the Middle East have protested vigorously against their members being included and the USA has already said it will fight being involved. The EC needs to step back from this idealism or risk sinking the scheme from the outset.
The practical solution is to get a sound European scheme up and running that can trade with others, such as those being proposed in California and Australia, when they begin. It could act as a template for the introduction of carbon trading industry-wide.
This does not mean those outside Europe can relax. Carriers need to back IATA's efforts to find a global position to take to the ICAO Assembly in September when it could, and should, devise guidelines that states can apply to begin carbon trading.
Bringing its worldwide membership into line with this position will be a tremendous challenge for IATA. There are those that doubt ICAO is up to the challenge as well. "Show some leadership ICAO - or others will usurp your position, and screw it up in the process," says Broughton, referring to the EC.
If the airline industry wants to prove it can be trusted to address its environmental impact and grow at the same time it needs to support emissions trading. The alternative will be the state-imposed blunt instrument of taxation. Airlines need the vision to engage now to shape and create a system that could become as embedded in the industry's psyche as the right to travel itself.
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Source: Airline Business
