Welcome to this week's Transport Vlog.
Now, strap yourselves in because this week is gonna get
a little bit technical
as we look at aviation emissions
and what the EU is trying to do to reduce them.
Now at the moment the European Union's Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS)
is the thing that kind of regulates aviation emissions.
And that's only for domestic EU flights,
so from Berlin to Lisbon.
That's counted underneath the carbon market.
Airlines have to pay to pollute.
You take that same flight from Berlin to New York though and it's not included.
That's because back in the day
the European Commission agreed to not include international aviation
in its system because it wanted to
lubricate the gears of the international climate diplomacy effort.
More on that, how that's going in the moment.
But it's time to review everything because in 2023
and that's derogation that the Commission set for international aviation
is going to expire.
And the new Commission has got all of these
fancy Green Deal flagship policies
that it wants to align.
It means the aviation can't be seen as the sector
where it's getting a free ride.
Now on Friday
the Commission published its inception assessment impact analysis
of updating the ETS Directive
especially when it comes to aviation and in that
it mentioned the UN's carbon offsetting scheme
which is called Corsia.
Now the point of that is to cap
global aviation emissions of a certain level
and every pit of growth above that level
is paid for by Airlines by investing in renewable energy projects,
forestation schemes, all of this kind of thing.
That was a bit of a scandal last week because
ICAO, the UN body that regulates aviation,
agreed to change this baseline
above which all the growth will have to be paid for
from 2019 and 2020, to just 2019.
Because they said that added slump in 2020s travel demand
caused by the coronavirus
will put everything out of whack.
Airlines would have to pay too much, etc...
But a lot of people got angry about that because they said,
well airlines are not on the hook that much money anyway,
this is going put the entire Corsia scheme out of whack.
It was a whole mess.
Now the EU has to decide what it does with Corsia.
It's fully committed to it, according to its own people.
So how do you integrate Corsia into the ETS?
Now it's come up with a number of options of how that's going to work,
depending on the results of stakeholder feedback consultation, its own inner workings.
That means either forgetting about Corsia completely
and just let in ETS revert back to its original focus
which was to regulate all aviation
in and out of the EU.
That's probably a non-starter because that kind of
puts a middle finger up to the US and other large aviation countries.
Another non-popular one is to basically take aviation out of the ETS completely
and have Corsia regulate everything.
Again that's not going to wash because
Corsia hasn't got the teeth that it had before
if it had anything to begin with.
So there's going to be a mix of some sort.
And the most likely one at the moment is that
ETS will continue to exist the way it has for the last few years
in that all of the aviation within the EU, EEA
is regulated by the carbon market
and then all the flights in and out will be under Corsia.
Whether or not that will keep everyone happy remains to be seen.
Probably not.
The other aspect of this is that
a lot of the pollution permits that airlines get under the ETS
at the moment are for free.
But the Commission is looking into
well, maybe that isn't actually a level playing field for everybody.
You know, power plants, industrial sectors or all these kind of things,
maybe maritime in the near future
will have to pay to pollute.
So it's asking, consult, you know, consultation and everything,
well how do we get rid of these free allowances?
Should we get rid of these free allowances?
And that ranges from, well,
on this date all of the free pollution permits are gone,
they're back into the market,
aviation will have to go from the same pot
as all the other power plants, coal, all of this kind of thing
which would probably drive the price up.
Would the market be ready for such a shock?
We don't know.
Or more gradual phase-out
or even just to leave things the way they are.
So this is what's going on at DG CLIMA
and the aviation heads of the Commission.
How do you regulate aviation within the EU
but then within this wider global context.
Especially when there are very valid suspicions
that the global instrument for this, Corsia,
might not have the bite to get the job done.
But we'll see.
That's one to watch.
I told it would be technical
and I think I've explained it correctly.
I'm always happy for feedback if I haven't.
And also personal opinions about what I'm saying.
We can have a nice argument about that in the comments
or in the mentions @SamJamesMorgan on Twitter, for example.
Thank you again to everyone who has tuned in
to this vlog over the few weeks that I've been doing it.
Subscribe to the Transport Brief.
Anyone who's kicked in to the EURACTIV crowdfund
we really appreciate it.
And I'll see you next time.
Ciao for now.