Unity needed to achieve carbon neutral goals

by ORIENT AVIATION 

May 1st 2014

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The aviation industry must speak and act with one voice if its target of carbon neutral growth by 2020 is to be met, said Tony Tyler, the director general and CEO of the International Transport Association (IATA) last month. Read More » Speaking at the 2014 Global Sustainable Aviation Summit in Geneva, organised by the Air Transport Action Group (ATAG), he said the industry must remain focused on three areas:

• mechanisms for biofuels to deliver a contribution to aviation’s environmental performance.

• extracting greater value from the managed approach to reducing aircraft noise.

• ensuring a global mandatory carbon offsetting scheme is implemented to enable the industry to meet its carbon neutral growth target by 2020.

Last October, at its triennial assembly, the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) gave the industry until its next meeting in 2016 to come up with a framework for a global Market Based Measure (MBM) that would support the goal of being carbon neutral by 2020.

“The discussions on the details of the MBM will not be easy,“ Tyler said. “If we remain united [in our goals] we will earn our licence to grow with our stakeholders and passengers. We will have the strength to find industry solutions … particularly the development of the global MBM.”

Tyler’s comments followed the welcome news of a few weeks earlier, when the European Parliament agreed that non-EU airlines would not have to participate in its controversial Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) until at least 2016. The EU said it had taken this position because of the ICAO’s commitment to delivering an international agreement that would apply a single, global MBM to measure emissions from aviation by 2020. The EU ETS will continue to apply to European airlines flying within the EU.