Airlines react with dismay to EU vote

The airline industry, already under pressure from high oil prices, has reacted angrily to news that the European Parliament has voted to include aviation in the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) as of 2012.

The vote means airlines will have to cut emissions by three per cent from 2005 levels in the first year and by five per cent from 2013 onward.

“The European Parliament… has no idea what the economic or social cost of the proposals will be and, even less so, their environmental impact,” said the European Regions Airline Association (ERAA) in a statement.

ERAA estimates the cost of entering the ETS for European airlines would be €7bn (£5.6bn) in the first two years of the scheme and €90.5bn (£72bn) over 10 years.

“Even if the legislation’s questionable environmental benefits are ignored, it is a mark of failure of the legislative process that this legislation has been adopted without a thorough assessment of its economic and social impact: this is not responsible law-making,” said ERAA director general Mike Ambrose. “That this legislation has been adopted without meaningful assessment of the jobs that will be put at risk and the communities that will be denied international access is inexcusable: that neither the Parliament nor the Council seems to care is indefensible.”

The ruling covers all airlines operating in EU airspace, not just EU-based or owned airlines. US airlines have reacted in a similar fashion.

Airlines will receive 85 per cent of their emission allowances free of charge when the scheme begins in 2012, and the rest of the credits will be auctioned. But the gratis percentage is likely to be reduced from the following year, subject to review.

Aviation accounts for between two and three per cent of world carbon emissions. But this has grown from 1.5 per cent since 1990 and the rate at which air travel is expanding has led environmentalists to lobby for aviation’s inclusion in the ETS.

Some flights will be exempt, such as light aircraft with a take-off weight of less than 5.7 tonnes; emergency, customs and military flights; UN-mandated humanitarian flights; research flights; and all flights run by small airlines producing emissions less than 10,000 tonnes of CO2 a year.