Tuesday, October 26, 2010

EU Says Aviation Organization Recognizes European Carbon Market

EU Says Aviation Organization Recognizes European Carbon Market

| Sourced From Bloomberg |

The European Union claimed a diplomatic victory at an international aviation meeting, saying the participants accepted the EU’s plan to cap emissions by domestic and foreign airlines serving Europe as of 2012.
The European Commission, the 27-nation EU’s executive arm, also said the International Civil Aviation Organization reached a “breakthrough” agreement at its meeting that ended yesterday to curb global aircraft discharges of greenhouse gases beginning in 2020.
Such pollution is blamed for global climate change, which the EU is handling in part by adding airlines to its emissions trading system in less than 15 months.
“Critically, the deal is a good basis for proceeding swiftly with the inclusion of aviation in the EU’s Emissions Trading Scheme,” EU Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard said in a statement published in Brussels today. “The goal is not as ambitious as Europe thinks it should be, but at the same time ICAO has recognised that some states may take more ambitious actions prior to 2020.”
The agreement, reached in Montreal after almost a decade of deadlock at ICAO, will cover more than 90 percent of worldwide air traffic, the EU said in the statement. Emissions from international aviation account now for 2 percent to 3 percent of global greenhouse gas discharges and their share is expected to rise in the coming decades as the industry grows, according to the EU.
EU Carbon Market
Participants of the meeting “refrained from language which would make the application of the EU’s ETS to their airlines dependent on the mutual agreement of other states,” the EU said in the statement. “It was this requirement that led to a stalemate at the last ICAO assembly in 2007.”
The EU carbon market, started in 2005, is the world’s largest. It covers about 12,000 installations that produce energy or goods ranging from paper to cement. Emitters must have an allowance for each ton of carbon dioxide they let off. Those producing more than their allowance have to buy more; those that emit less can sell their surplus.
The bloc is on track to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent this decade from 1990s levels and said it’s ready to deepen the target to 30 percent if other countries follow suit.
The next round of international talks on climate are due to start toward the end of November in Cancun, Mexico.


carbon trading

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