Aviation & Shipping Emissions
July 24
(George Monbiot) A cunning new loophole has wrecked the government’s Climate Change Bill.
The government has some good climate policies. It also has some bleeding disastrous ones, which appear to commit the United Kingdom to high carbon pollution for the entire period covered by the bill. A future Labour government would find itself snared by its own current policies. Surely it wouldn’t be foolish enough to set such a trap for itself?
One policy alone seems to doom future governments to prosecution: the planned doubling of the capacity of the UK’s airports by 2030. Using the Department for Transport’s projections, I estimate that by 2050 aeroplanes will account for 91% of all the greenhouse gases the country should be producing. Under the less optimistic figures published by Defra, the environment department, the proportion rises to 258%(1).
THE AVIATION AND CARBON MARKETS
EVENT OF THE YEAR
The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), a Specialized Agency of the United Nations, will be holding a unique Workshop on Aviation and Carbon Markets on 18/19 June 2008 and has the pleasure to invite your company to be part of this milestone event by becoming one of our prestigious sponsors/exhibitors and/or attendees
Over 150 representatives from ICAO’s 190 Member States, as well as industry and organisations involved in aviation emissions, will be participating in the Workshop. This presents you with an exclusive opportunity to liaise with key decision-makers at this workshop.
Crucial industry issues in this important area of aviation will be addressed including:
Assessing Aviation Emissions; Emissions Trading Schemes; Carbon Offset Programmes; Creating Global Schemes.
Aviation and Shipping Industries Not Yet Ready to
Tackle Own Emissions
An interesting discussion broke out today at the UN
climate change talks in Bangkok (yes, every so often it happens). It involved how the Kyoto Protocol could be strengthened by including greenhouse gases or emitting sectors that had previously been excluded.
Much of the discussion focused on emissions from international aviation and international shipping, what people here call “bunker fuels.”
Both of these sectors are significant contributors to global warming. If either were countries, they’d be in the top 5 or 6 globally in terms of their contribution to polluting the atmosphere. More importantly, emissions from both sectors are rising fast, faster in fact than any other sector. Emissions from international flights, for example, have nearly doubled since 1990.
When the Kyoto Protocol was being negotiated back in 1997, the technical issues surrounding how to allocate the emissions were deemed too complicated. For example, when a ship or plane leaves one country, arrives in another, and maybe refuels in a third along
the way, which country is responsible for the emissions? Nobody had easy answers, so the industry associations—the International Civil Aviation Association (ICAO) and the International Marine Organization (IMO)—were formally given the mandate of figuring out how to address their own emissions.
Ten years later, guess what’s happened? Nothing. ICAO gave a presentation at the UN today whose message was essentially, “It’s really still too complicated.” Many countries, including the EU-27 and Norway, have made the point that the barriers are political, not technical. Today, they made concrete suggestions. For example, emissions from international flights could be assigned to where planes refuel. Wow, that doesn’t seem complicated at all.
The EU’s message was pretty clear: Enough is enough. If the industries don’t want to come up with solutions, we should. So let’s set up a working group to decide this at the UN.
Seems reasonable, after so much time. As expected,
there was opposition from countries that serve as international shipping hubs (Panama) and aviation hubs (Singapore), who would probably prefer no regulation at all. Unfortunately, however, Canada also opposed having a UN discussion, though we did say we wanted these emissions addressed. Apparently, the Canadian government thinks the industries need just a little more time to figure things out.
