Low-cost airlines claimed on Monday that they will not make windfall profits from a trading program intended to limit their greenhouse gas emissions.
The EU wants all airlines that fly within its borders to trade pollution permits beginning in 2011, forcing them to buy more permits if they want to operate more or longer flights.
The EU’s cap-and-trade program gives companies a permit to pollute that they can sell to other companies if they use cleaner technology or emit less carbon dioxide. Businesses with more permits than they need can potentially profit.
But EU governments and lawmakers plan to force airlines to buy 15 percent of available permits to avoid any profiteering — something the European Low Fares Airline Association says is unlikely to happen.
A report ordered by the UK government last year claimed that all airlines would be able to pass on extra costs to customers, giving carriers less incentive to make real cuts to how much carbon dioxide they emit. To combat this, it called for more permits to be sold to companies.
The association says members will instead be unfairly loaded with high costs because they will have to buy the permits.
They cited a study they commissioned by Ernst & Young and York Aviation. It forecast a cost of 4 billion euros (US$5.5 billion) per year for low-cost carriers if they had to buy just 3 percent of all permits. The airlines say this will wipe out future profits and stop them from expanding.
The global airline industry also says that governments are ignoring airlines’ efforts to become more fuel-efficient and are threatening them with extra costs instead.
Giovanni Bisignani, the director general of the International Air Transport Association, said on Monday that airlines are generating enormous carbon dioxide savings by shortening routes, managing fuel more carefully and improving air navigation.
He said that “governments think green and see cash.”
“We get tax after tax, conceived in the name of the environment, which rob the industry of the cash to invest in technology,” he said in a speech in Amsterdam.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese