The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), a UN specialized agency, has made headway on establishing international standards for its Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation, known as CORSIA for short. This plan aims to keep the carbon dioxide emissions from international aviation at the same level from 2020 onward.
These standards measure how much airlines will need to reduce the growth of greenhouse-gas emissions from planes, the Associated Press’ David Koenig reported.
“Under a 2016 agreement, airlines that fly international routes are to begin measuring their emissions next January 1,” he wrote. “Those measurements will be used to determine how much airlines need to offset the growth in emissions.”
Previously, the ICAO failed to adopt a global measure to reduce carbon emissions from international aviation in 2013. Instead, the agency promised to “have tools in place” for developing a market-based measure by 2016.
Aviation, along with shipping, was initially left off the 2015 Paris accord. In April, the shipping industry agreed to a historic global emissions cut. Currently aviation accounts for 2% of global emissions linked to climate change, but its share is growing rapidly, Koenig noted.
The ICAO announced making headway on standards supporting the CORSIA plan at a recent meeting in Montreal.
“Future council work on CORSIA will focus on the timely realization of the remaining CORSIA implementation elements, including the evaluation of carbon market programs against a set of robust criteria, the determination of its eligible emissions units, and which aviation fuels will meet the CORSIA sustainability criteria,” the agency said.
A change in the definition of alternative fuels to include fossil fuels that are marginally cleaner than others was one of the more contentious issues at the meeting, Koenig reported. “Environmentalists worry that could undercut momentum to use biofuels or develop electric-powered planes,” he wrote. “Some European countries had expressed opposition to the change, but an airline group called the Air Transport Action Group said the UN group approved it.”
Although the group agreed on emissions standards, many details will still need to be determined.
Separately from the UN standards development, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) representing the global airline industry recently developed their own emissions targets. This includes an average improvement in fuel efficiency of 1.5% per year from 2009 to 2020, a cap on net aviation CO2 emissions from 2020, and a reduction in net aviation CO2 emissions of 50% by 2050 relative to 2005 levels.
Reaching the 2020 cap requires procuring carbon credits or using biofuel, says Philippe Lacamp, senior vice president of Cathay Pacific Airways for the Americas. He recently spoke to Environmental Leader about biofuel development in the airline industry.
“Biofuel will be what we call zero-rated. The carbon that you prevent from being emitted through the use of the feedstock allows you to not pay a price for carbon per ton that you burn. That will be market-dependent,” he said. “If the carbon credit is sufficiently cheap, then many airlines will opt to buy carbon credits. If they are high, then I imagine one will see greater interest in biofuel.”
