With less than four months to go before the March 31 deadline for aircraft operators to submit independently verified emissions reports for the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme (EU-ETS), there is still widespread confusion as to how the verification process will work for many in the business aviation sector. European authorities continue to be slow in approving the independent verification companies needed to complete the task and the industry is still awaiting a final European Commission ruling as to whether costly site visits will be required to complete verification for the so-called smaller emitters.
What is clear is that all operators assigned to an EU state for ETS compliance purposes (regardless of whether they are based in the EU) have to file a verified emissions report for 2010–regardless of whether or not they are claiming free carbon credits for 2012, when the full ETS implementation begins. In the October edition of AIN (“Confusion reigns over ETS implementation in Europe,” page 6), it was incorrectly reported that only operators claiming credits need to complete this task. Those claiming credits also have to file the so-called “tonne-kilometer” report, calculated from the number of metric tons of fuel burned, the number of kilometers flown within EU airspace over a Great Circle route (plus 95 nm) and the payload flown.
More In Sustainability and Environment
