International

25
Sep

The general assembly of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) this week will debate proposals for a global market-based mechanism (MBM) to control the increase in carbon-dioxide emissions from air transport. As an interim measure aimed at reaching consensus, negotiators for the 28-state European Union (EU) have offered to alter its existing emissions trading scheme (ETS) so that it would apply only to flying activity within EU airspace and not to all stages of intercontinental flights. Delegates to the 38th triennial ICAO assembly, which begins on September 24 and runs through October 4, plan to begin discussing draft resolution A37-19 on September 26 and conduct a final vote on October 2. The proposals call for ratification of the envisioned MBM by the 39th assembly in 2016 and full implementation in 2020. In the meantime, the EU-ETS would remain in force, although with a more limited scope. On September 18, lobbying groups the Environmental Defense Fund, the World Wildlife Fund and Transport & Environment called for ICAO to bring forward ratification of the new plan to 2015 and implement it in 2016. Although all sides of the sometimes fractious debate seem ready to compromise to avoid a trade war that threats of retaliatory ...

18
Sep

The airline industry’s attention will turn to Montreal later this month, where European environmental regulators and a host of skeptical nations — including the United States — will square off at the United Nations civil aviation arm’s triennial meeting over how to control jet aircraft emissions. At issue is whether the International Civil Aviation Organization can negotiate a deal that would effectively cap the aviation industry’s emissions worldwide and supersede European Union rules that many foreign airlines say are too expensive and impractical. Some critics of the play say it exceeds the union’s jurisdiction. Congress first got involved in the issue last year, when both chambers passed legislation by Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., barring U.S. airlines from participating in the EU’s emissions trading scheme. President Barack Obama signed the bill into law (PL 112-200) shortly after Thanksgiving. The EU’s top climate official said in November that the emissions trading system would not be enforced before the ICAO meeting this year. Connie Hedegaard, the EU’s climate action commissioner, said the cap-and-trade system proposed for airlines would probably be tucked away if the ICAO can work out a way to curb emissions at the same level the EU’s law is expected to. But European officials ...

07
Sep

Seeking to end years of acrimony, the European Union has made concessions to the United States to try to gain support for global rules on airline emissions. Under the arrangement, the European Union would pare back its regulations, applying them only to its own airspace. The original plan, which the United States and other countries rejected, would have imposed charges for emissions over an airline’s entire route if the flight began or ended in Europe. In exchange, Europe is pushing for a global deal on aviation emissions. The European concessions — proposed quietly over the summer and made public this week — aim to end a trans-Atlantic dispute over a European law to curb emissions on major international routes. In doing so, the European Union is looking to present a united front with the Americans and press the rest of the world to adopt similar or more extensive controls. “This is a multilateral negotiation where you give and take,” Isaac Valero-Ladrón, a spokesman for the European Commission, said in a statement. “We should not miss the bigger picture: a global deal means more emissions covered in the long term.” The European law, which came into force on Jan. 1, 2012, covers emissions from most flights ...

07

The EU agreed to a deal late Wednesday to scale back its law regulating carbon from flights as U.N. negotiators pledged to craft a global pact on aviation emissions that would not take effect for seven years. EU officials agreed at U.N. talks in Montreal to only include emissions from flights over European airspace in the bloc's Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), said the EU's top climate official Jos Delbeke, a move that would scale down a law that covers all flights to and from Europe. The deal, which still needs to be signed off by a full meeting of the U.N.'s aviation body ICAO ending Oct. 4 and by EU lawmakers, drew fire from green groups and sparked a renewed threat of legal action by European airlines. "There are bits and pieces of that text that make everybody unhappy. So it's maybe not too far away from an ideal compromise," said Delbeke at an event at the EU Parliament in Brussels. The deal falls short of the worldwide pact the EU had hoped for in November 2012 when it exempted foreign flights for one year to give ICAO more time to strike a global deal and avert The agreement will force airlines to surrender more ...

04
Sep

Talks at the U.N.'s aviation body must bridge a deep divide between developed and emerging nations over airline emissions to avert the threat of a carbon trade war with the European Union. After more than a decade of debate at the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), there is little sign emerging powers China and India are ready to pay to pollute. Failure to get a deal would open the way for the European Union to resume international implementation of its own law that makes all aviation using EU airports buy carbon allowances. The last time it tried to enforce the law over frustration at a lack of ICAO progress, the EU faced counter-measures and the suspension of Chinese orders for Airbus jets. Some orders are still frozen. In response to claims it was breaching sovereignty, the EU suspended the law, but said it would re-impose it unless the ICAO found an alternative. With time running short before the EU has to decide what to do, the ICAO will hold a preliminary meeting on September 4. That in theory will finalize the ground work for an outline global deal at the triennial general assembly beginning on September 24 at the ICAO headquarters in Montreal. But still ...