WHAT IS CARBON LEAKAGE?
What is Emissions Trading?
Emission Trading Scheme (ETS) means that a robust cap is imposed on carbon dioxide emissions from different polluting industries. Carbon allowances are issued to participating companies up to the level of the cap. At the end of the year each company has to have sufficient allowances to cover each tonne of CO2 they’ve emitted during the year. Because the ETS is designed to encourage lower carbon behaviour by companies, airlines won’t be given sufficient allowances to cover their activities and will have to purchase these from other industries who have been able to reduce their emissions more quickly. The European Union Emission Trading Scheme is going to include aviation and will come into effect in 2012.
Carbon Leakage is where an increase in emissions occurs outside a region due to a policy to cap emissions in that region. With the inclusion of aviation within the European Union Emission Trading Scheme (EU-ETS) there is a risk that carriers will move activities outside the EU to avoid the EU-ETS costs or that increased costs will lead to loss of market share with demand shifting to non EU-ETS affected carriers. This would result in no overall reduction in global carbon emissions as the emissions would simply be shifted to other markets and regions. This is one of the reasons why we support a global sectoral approach for aviation and believe a worldwide solution is needed for what is a worldwide problem.
The Sustainable Aviation Fuel Users Group is an initiative to promote sustainable, second-generation biofuels
for the aviation industry.
Virgin Atlantic made a declaration, along with other airlines, of its commitment to advance the development, certification, and commercial use of drop-in sustainable aviation fuels that do not compete with food cultivation for land or water. These have lower life-cycle carbon footprints than traditional jet fuel, do not lead to deforestation or the loss of high value, endangered or sensitive ecosystems and retain socioeconomic benefits in the communities in which they are cultivated.
(www.safug.org)
Roundtable on Sustainable Biofuels
is an international multi-stakeholder body which is creating standards and audit protocols to make it possible through independent third party certification to identify biofuels that come from sustainable sources. Third party certification ensures that new supply chains develop to high environmental and social standards, so that concerns about competition with land for food cultivation, deforestation and relative life-cycle carbon footprints can be addressed and reconciled early on (read more on the RSB on page 37 or on their website at: www.rsb.org).
On 24 February 2008, Virgin Atlantic became
the first airline in the world to
operate a commercial aircraft on a biofuel blend. The Boeing 747 flew a short flight from London to Amsterdam, using a 20% biofuel/80% kerosene blend in one of its four engines.
The purpose of the demonstration flight was
to move the debate forward by proving
that biofuels are technically a feasible solution. Virgin Atlantic knew that the biofuel used for its test flight would not be commercially viable for the industry, but wanted to demonstrate
that biofuels could be a future solution
for the industry.
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