Obama to pave way to regulate US aviation industry CO2 emissions

It is understood that the Obama administration is on the point of releasing information that greenhouse gases from the aviation industry pose a threat to human health. It is believed the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will produce an ‘endangered finding’ and if this is the case, it will present an opportunity for the Obama administration to implement a global carbon dioxide emissions standard which is currently being developed by the United Nations’ International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO). The results of the scientific study have been under review at the White House Office of Management and Budget and only recently have they been returned to the EPA for release. The ICAO aims to invite comments on its CO2 standard in February 2016, with the aim of having it adopted later in the year. However it is understood the requirement will only apply to new aircraft designs certified from 2020, leaving existing fleets unaffected. According to the Air Transport Action Group (ATAG) in 2013 the global aviation industry was responsible for the production of 705 million tons of CO2, while in 2014 it was responsible for 2% of all CO2 emissions and 12% of all transport-related CO2 emissions. The EPA’s decision will see the first step taken toward regulating aviation’s greenhouse gas emissions as it becomes the latest industrial sector to fall under the regulations of the Clean Air Act. However this situation has only arisen as a result of a federal court ruling in 2012 given in favor of a number of environmental groups which had sued the EPA on the basis it was obligated by law to regulate aircraft emissions. Certainly the airline industry would favor a global standard as opposed to individual national ones as carriers operate all over the world and would prefer to avoid a patchwork of rules covering taxes, charges and emissions trading programs. According to Paul Steele, Senior Vice President at the International Air Transport Association, “If you’re a big airline and you’re flying to 100 countries a day, then complying with all those different regimes is an administrative nightmare.” However a number of environmental groups are concerned that the standard being discussed at the ICAO will actually change very little today. Sarah Burt, a lawyer at Earthjustice, one of the groups that sued the EPA said, “The stringency being discussed at ICAO is such that existing aircraft are already meeting the standard they are weighing,” adding that planes normally remain in service for 20 to 30 years.
The major concern relates to the difference between introducing the standard for aircraft produced after 1st January 2020 and the current proposal that it applies only to new designs produced after 2020, the result of which would mean that by 2030, only 5% of the world’s aircraft would be subject to the proposed regulations.