Due to the impact of Covid-19 on air traffic, the Council of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) finally decided, on Tuesday 30 June, to change the reference period that airlines will have to use to calculate their CO2 emissions offsetting requirements under the Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation (CORSIA).
For the time being, this decision only concerns the pilot phase of CORSIA, which runs from 2021 to 2023.
This means that, during this period, in order to determine the level of CO2 emissions not to be exceeded and thus calculate their offsetting requirements, airlines will use the emissions of the aviation sector in the year 2019, and not the average CO2 emissions of the years 2019 and 2020 as ICAO had forecast in 2018.
The organisation justifies this decision on the grounds that retaining the 2019-2020 option would create "an inappropriate economic burden to aeroplane operators, due to the need to offset more emissions although they are flying less and generating less emissions".
Since the Covid-19 pandemic significantly reduced international aviation traffic and emissions in 2020, the CORSIA baseline would in essence be much lower than expected if calculated as the average of the sector's emissions in 2019 and 2020, the ICAO said.
With regard to the possibility of applying this change also to the post-2023 phases of CORSIA, the 36 Member States of the ICAO Council agreed to discuss this at the 41st ICAO Assembly in 2022.
A controversial decision. While this change in the reference period should please the International Air Transport Association (IATA), which advocated this (see EUROPE 12502/4), environmental NGOs, on the other hand, castigated it, while reiterating their criticism of CORSIA in general.
"The ICAO Council's decision to further deflate the ambition of CORSIA is a betrayal to future generations", said the 'International Coalition for Sustainable Aviation' (ICSA). It added: "It is unnecessary, given the programme's flexibility and it is illegal unless ratified by the [ICAO] Assembly".
For Gilles Dufrasne, a member of Carbon Market Watch, CORSIA will now be ineffective until 2024 or later, depending on how quickly the sector recovers from the current crisis and thus returns to pre-crisis emission levels. "While CORSIA will officially start in 2021, the airlines will not have to do anything until several years later", he deplored.
Like the ICSA, Mr Dufrasne also considers that the ICAO Council's decision only weakens an international system which is already largely insufficient to really reduce emissions from the aviation sector and reinforces the need for action at regional and national levels. (Original version in French by Damien Genicot)