Like it or not, and regardless of where they are based, many business aircraft operators who fly into European airspace will be required to account for the carbon they emit and ensure that they have bought enough carbon credits to cover this output when Europe’s emissions trading scheme (ETS) is fully up and running in January 2012. Some operators will be exempt (ETS for Aviation: the Theory on the below), but for those subject to ETS this will mean increased costs at a time when business aviation can ill afford more expenditure.
And to add insult to injury, operators trying to meet the requirement to register for ETS compliance before European officials start calculating their emissions baselines in 2010 have faced widespread confusion and bureaucratic chaos. Here at the NBAA Convention, a UK-based company called ETS Aviation (Booth No. 1648) is running an ETS helpdesk to try to guide operators through the maze (see Helping to Heal the ETS Headaches) The bureaucratic torpor and confusion that has mired the initial registration process for the introduction of Europe’s new ETS has brought the cap-and-trade approach to reducing aviation’s carbon footprint into disrepute, according to the European Business Aviation Association (EBAA). The group is launching a new lobbying effort aimed at convincing members of the European Parliament that, as it predicted all along, the cost burden entailed in bringing small operators into ETS has vastly outweighed the minuscule contribution that these aircraft make to air transport’s combined output of carbon dioxide (CO2).
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