One does not change a winning team. Ten days from the opening of the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO)’s general assembly in Montreal on 27 September to 7 October, where a market mechanism for reducing emissions from aviation will be adopted, the European Commission hopes that the High Ambition Coalition that worked wonders for the signing of the Paris Climate Agreement will engender similar success.
On Friday 16 September European Commissioners for Climate Action and Energy, Miguel Arias Cañete, and Transport, Violetta Bulc, called on international partners to join the coalition of industrialised and developing countries to obtain an ambitious first global agreement on international aviation contributing to the fight against climate change.
In a joint statement backed by the Marshall Islands and Mexico, the two commissioners say: "It is crucial that we once again work together as a High Ambition Coalition to secure an ambitious and robust Global Market-Based Measure, with broad participation and the widest possible emission coverage, to make the objective of stabilising CO2 emissions from international aviation from 2020 a reality (…). As participants in the High Ambition Coalition, we are inviting you to encourage as many ICAO states as possible, in particular all major aviation states, to join from the beginning of the scheme, and to declare their intention to opt in as soon as possible, and no later than at the Assembly. Together, we must ensure, through our own action and encouraging the action of others, that the Assembly achieves the highest possible participation".
The European Union and its member states, plus the other countries in the European Conference of Civil Aviation (ECCA) – 44 countries in total – have already explained in the Bratislava declaration that they are planning to participate in the system in 2021, when the pilot phase of the planned system is due to start (see EUROPE 11621).
The European Parliament is highly critical of the concessions that the European Commission seems prepared to make in the light of the negotiating document because the document does not foresee all countries’ participation until 2027. The MEPs recently pointed out that in the absence of a suitable agreement at the ICAO, which is due to come into force in 2020, the EU should apply its own legislation, as it has announced, on the carbon exchange system (the ETS directive) such as it was initially designed, in other words including inter-continental flights, aware that the derogation to ETS granted to such flights ends on 31 December 2016 (see EUROPE 11620).
The draft agreement on the ICAO’s negotiating table has no connection with ETS, which combined an upper limit on emissions with the trading of emissions quotas. The ICAO’s document foresees neutral growth in carbon in international aviation in 2020 and then a compensation system for emissions by other sectors.
The Paris Climate Agreement does not set any objectives for international air transport, or international shipping for that matter. The contribution of these two sectors to the Paris Climate Agreement’s targets, however (keeping warming at below 2 degrees Celsius and working to reduce it to 1.5 degrees Celsius), is viewed as crucial. With no change in policy, it is estimated that air transport emissions could rise by nearly 300% during the 21st century. (Original version in French by Aminata Niang)