U.N. agency proposes first airplane emissions rules
Associated Press
A U.N. panel has proposed long-sought greenhouse gas emissions standards for airliners and cargo planes, drawing praise from the White House and criticism from environmentalists who said they would be too weak to slow global warming.
The International Civil Aviation Organization said Monday the agreement reached by the agency’s environmental panel requires that new aircraft designs meet the standards beginning in 2020, and that designs already in production comply by 2023.
There is also a cutoff date of 2028 for the manufacture of planes that don’t comply with the standards. The standard must still be adopted by the agency’s 36-nation governing council, but substantive changes aren’t expected.
The standards would be the first ever to impose binding energy efficiency and carbon dioxide reduction targets for the aviation sector. When fully implemented, the standards are expected to reduce carbon emissions more than 650 million tons between 2020 and 2040, equivalent to removing more than 140 million cars from the road for a year, according to the White House.
The standards would require an average 4 percent reduction in fuel consumption during the cr uise phase of flight starting in 2028 when compared with planes delivered in 2015. However, planes burn the most fuel during ta keoffs and landings, while cruising at high altitudes is already the most fuelefficient period.
The agreement is the first of two important opportunities this year to reduce carbon emissions from aviation. The sec- ond opportunity will come later this year when ICAO tries to reach an agreement on a “market-based approach” that would use economic incentives to further reduce aviation carbon emissions.
The st a nda rd s a nnounced Monday don’t set the bar high enough, said Dan Rutherford, aviation direction of the International Council on Clean Transportation, since they require reductions of only about a third of what is expected to be technically possible with the more fuel-efficient planes that will be in production when the standard takes effect.
The newest Boeing and Airbus designs already meet the proposed efficiency standards, due to demands for fuel savings from the airlines, environ mentalists sa id . In the meantime, the manufacturers get to continue selling older, less efficient designs for years to come. Airliners in use now are exempt from the new standards altogether, meaning even dirtier planes can continue to fly.
Boeing called the agreement “re a l prog re ss” beyond i ndustr y steps already taken to reduce aviation emissions.
ICAO council president Olumuyiwa Benard Aliu said the agency’s goal “is ultimately to ensure that when the next generation of aircraft types enters service, there will be guaranteed reductions in international carbon emissions.”
Aviation accounts for about 5 percent of global greenhouse emissions, according to environmentalists. ICAO says it’s actually less than 2 percent.