UK aerospace manufacturers are facing an additional £1 million ($1.8 million) in annual costs due to a procedural error in calculating the sector’s emissions targets, says the Society of British Aerospace Companies (SBAC) .
Under phase I of the European Union emissions trading scheme (ETS), which started in January, each country divides its national quota for total carbon dioxide emissions under its own rules. The UK grouped aerospace companies with train and ship builders to create an engineering and vehicle manufacturing sector.
The country’s environment ministry initially set a target for companies in the sector to reduce emissions by 6% annually, based on recorded emmissions between 1998 and 2003.
However, in June the ministry revised the target to 51% after including two power stations owned by Rolls-Royce that had been omitted from the analysis. SBAC is challenging the decision to include the two Trent industrial turbines operated by R-R Power Ventures, that provide power to the company’s engine factories in Bristol and Derby.
The two generators were not operational in 2003 and have been added retroactively.
The SBAC says this fails to meet the “new entrant” provision in the UK’s allocation methodology that allows for new installations omitted from the calculation to be analysed separately.
However, a source within the UK environment ministry says R-R transferred the two plants to R-R Power Ventures to have them assessed as part of the power generation sector, rather than the manufacturing sector.
R-R says: “Power generation sites in Derby and Bristol came on stream after the period of initial assessment. This is the reason they were not included. We’re discussing our postion with the environment ministry through the SBAC.”
SBAC government relations manager Sarah Macken says the inclusion of the two combined heat and power installations into the sector has rendered the targets unrealistic and will lead to aerospace companies having to buy additional carbon credits to make up the difference.
“We estimate that at today’s market rate, this will cost the industry around £1 million annually,” she says.
The SBAC wrote to the UK environment minister Margaret Beckett in June to request an urgent meeting to discuss the anomaly, but has yet to receive a reply. The environment ministry says that it will reply in “due course” to the letter.
JUSTIN WASTNAGE/LONDON
Source: Flight International
