The need to demonstrate environmental responsibility while remaining operationally viable has been identified as the biggest single challenge facing business aviation. This has prompted the business aviation industry to offer self-governing carbon-offset-based alternatives to the European Union’s CO2 emission trading scheme (ETS). However, the European Union seems likely to insist that ETS is a well-oiled machine with proven environmental benefits and require that it be imposed on all of aviation.
“Business aviation is the ultimate minority interest and easy to portray as a wasteful use of resources despite the fact that we are [a tiny part of] annual emissions,” HRH Prince Michael of Kent, new patron of the British Business and General Aviation Association (BBGA), told the group’s annual conference in March. “Nonetheless, we must be seen to be acting responsibly by voluntarily offsetting emissions. We have to win our right to continue flying.”
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