EU ETS

The European Union’s Emissions Trading Scheme was created in 2005 in order to reduce carbon emissions in the atmosphere. The Trading Scheme focuses on many different sources of the carbon emissions including the global aviation industry.

Every year the EU ETS will grant every company an allowance, this allowance represents the amount of carbon emissions a company can produce. At the end of the year if the company has some of its allowance left over they have the option to sell the some or keep it for future years. If a company goes over their allowance they are given a heavy fine. The reason implementing this “trading scheme” is to lower emissions, and to reward the companies that are having success doing this. In order for the companies to evolve along with the new carbon reducing technologies their allowances are going to reduce each year.

This sounds like a great plan right?  Well maybe not for non EU countries. The United States and China are both strongly opposed to this new law. The US does not agree with the EU putting this plan into place because they feel that a plan like this should be developed by ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organization). This would make it more financially fair on a global level, whereas now most of the financial gain goes to the EU. The biggest controversy is over the fact that the EU ETS will starts measuring the emissions from takeoff till landing, even if the origin of the flight is not within the EU’s airspace. For example, if a there is a flight from Los Angeles to Paris it will get charged for the entire length of the flight. The US feels the EU does not have the authority to do this.

I definitely feel that there needs to be a solution to aviation emissions. With that being said I feel that the intensions of the EU are in the right place even with charging airlines for an entire flight no matter where the origin is. However, I feel that something like this should be handled by ICAO, and any benefit from a system like this such as money should be invested into developing even more technology that can help reduce emissions.