IATA plans to curb greenhouse gas emissions

The air transport industry worldwide, including aircraft manufacturers, airlines and airport operators, has promised to lessen carbon gas emissions. The move, coming before Copenhagen’s climate conference next month, is an effort to extend the EU’s carbon trading scheme to air transport operators. The airline industry was not included in the Kyoto protocol, but intense attacks from pro-environment groups, mainly from the UK, have led the industry to think on concessions.

IATA plans to submit to the UN a scheme on carbon trading by November next year. It also promises to make the aviation industry carbon neutral by 2020 through cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 1.5 per cent annually over the next decade. Moreover, the air transport association plans to lessen 2050’s carbon emissions by 50 percent, compared with 2005 levels.

However, non-EU carriers flying into Europe, which will be required to join the programme, are attacking the EU’s carbon trading system as unattainable and expensive for the industry. The scheme would put in around £8 to the ticket price of short-haul flights and over £35 for long-haul air tickets.

In the long term, IATA is looking to technological solutions to attain its carbon emission targets, namely new airspace management, aircrafts and airplane parts.

Having long excluded from carbon control, the global air transport industry will encounter increasingly strict measures, that could probably raise air travelling cost, to curb its emissions. At worst, the historic pattern of the industry’s expansion could hold back the demand for new airplanes and airline revenues.