The aviation sector called on governments on Friday to agree on a global set of rules on tackling the industry’s carbon emissions to avoid chaos from a range of competing systems.
Officials from airlines, airports, air traffic bodies and major manufacturers such as Airbus and Boeing also asked for more cooperation from states and energy firms for their drive to meet their own green targets.
The appeal, issued ahead of a meeting of member governments of the U.N. International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) in Montreal, said only “a global framework to limit and reduce aviation emissions” could enable the industry to meet its pledge to cap them by 2020.
In a submission to the ICAO meeting, from September 28 to October 8, the aviation leaders called for governments to agree the new set of rules before climate change negotiators hold talks in Cancun at the end of the year.
At a two-day aviation and environment conference in Geneva, delegates from all sectors of aviation said their aim to improve fuel efficiency by 1.5 percent a year over the next decade would be imperiled without an ICAO accord.
EU Trading Scheme
They argued that a European Union emissions trading scheme in operation for some five years, and hotly contested by the industry and most governments outside Europe, showed the danger of unilaterally imposed measures.
Critics of the scheme, applied to all airlines flying into member states, say it discriminates against long-haul companies by counting emissions from the last take-off point, meaning a flight from Japan would be taxed in Europe for its whole route.
The industry leaders said that if similar schemes, and taxes nominally for environmental purposes but often used to feed overall national budgets, were to spread it would damage aviation “and adversely affect the world economy as a whole.”
The view was backed at the conference by John Byerly, U.S. deputy assistant secretary for transportation affairs. “If we don’t reach consensus at ICAO, it will be chaos,” he said.
Aviation, responsible for some 2 percent of the world carbon emissions blamed for global warming and climate change, has been assigned a special status for the Cancun meeting, allowing it to stand separately in a world climate pact.
But that will apply only if the industry can go to Cancun with government support for the emission control plan that it has already proposed, as well as a worldwide framework of rules backed by ICAO governments.
The head of the airline grouping IATA, Giovanni Bisignani, told the Geneva conference airlines and biofuel producers had used scarce funds and energy to develop alternatives to the polluting kerosone used by the world’s aircraft.
“Governments invested peanuts and the oil companies even less,” he said. “Biofuels could break the tyranny of oil and lift millions from poverty along with providing a sustainable fuel source for aviation.”
