The European Union is playing hardball with the US aviation industry.
In order to reduce aviation-generated carbon emissions in Europe, the EU is requiring airlines to join a carbon cap and trade program no later than 2012. It's a European plan, but its not just for European airlines. Jacques Barrot, the EU transport commissioner, announced that all airlines with European service must participate, and those which don't may see access to lucrative European destinations chopped.
The US industry is not amused.
Other industries in Europe have been engaged in carbon trading since 2005, and EU environment ministers decided last year that its time for commercial avaiation to come to the party. Under their plan, airlines will be allocated carbon credits that they use to "pay" for their CO2 emissions on an annual basis. Airlines that come in under their quota will end the year with extra credits which they can then sell on the carbon market. And they'll have plenty of buyers -- pollution spewing airlines that exceed their yearly allowance will need to buy additional credits. This, in a nutshell, is how carbon trading works.
European airlines aren't exactly doing cartwheels over the plan, though with carbon trading a key part of the Continent's environmental strategy, they must have seen it coming. But non-European carriers say it's unfair and potentially illegal that the scheme is being imposed on any airline flying into or out of the EU.
The US airlines aren't having it. They say the Europeans are being hysterical and that forced participation in their carbon trading plan violates international treaties. The Air Transport Association, the trade group for US carriers, calls the European's focus on aviation emissions "out of proportion" and believes that the US industry is having success with market driven approaches like buying more fuel-efficient aircraft, reducing the weight of their planes, and investigating alternative fuels.
But EU airlines insist that if they have to join the carbon trading market, their US competitors should be forced to jump in as well. They expect to shell out up to $65 billion buying carbon credits over the next 15 years, and say that if other airlines aren't forced to do the same, it would amount to a massive tax on European aviation.
It's unlikely that the EU would ever go so far as to actually impose flight curbs. Foreign airlines would likely respond in kind, which would cause serious financial hardship all around. But even the threat shows just how far apart the EU and US are when it comes to aviation-related environmental oversight.
Is the EU overstepping its bounds? Threatening to suck the life out of an already fragile industry with a blanket of stifling regulation? Or is the US, with its "let the market take care of it" approach, not doing enough to hold aviation accountable for its carbon output?
Photo: delta407/Creative Commons 2.0
