A report from Oxford University’s Environmental Change Institute, which highlights the mismatch between government’s climate change policy and its aviation policy, has elicited indifference from the DTI (Department of Trade and Industry) and airlines, despite approval from the government’s Sustainable Development Commission.

The report, Predict and Decide: Aviation, Climate Change and Policy(1), which was commissioned by the government-funded UK Energy Research Centre, concludes that a radical shift in strategy is required if the UK’s climate change targets are to be met.

Higher air charges

It points out that, while the UK Government is committed to a 60 per cent reduction in CO2 emissions between 1990 and 2050, its recent aviation White Paper would allow air passenger movements to double from 2003 to 2030. Its analyses show that, to meet its CO2 targets, the government will have to curb overall air travel. The researchers suggest increasing air charges and scrapping airport expansion plans as first steps.

‘Making flying more expensive, by introducing new taxes … offers one of the quickest ways to address the demand for air travel,’ says the report, which supports increased air passenger duty and adding VAT to airline tickets.

Government response

However, the government and airlines have said a ‘balanced approach’ is needed. They prefer to wait until the aviation industry is introduced into the European Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), when its activities will be regulated by the requirement for big emitters to buy carbon emissions credits on the open market.

The British Air Transport Association (BATA) supported this argument with results from a recent survey, which concluded that 48 per cent of the public felt that the environmental costs of air travel should be met by international emissions trading, and only 32 per cent preferred the idea of a green tax on tickets.

Watchdog reaction

The government’s sustainable development watchdog, the Sustainable Development Commission, is sceptical about relying solely on the ETS. Dr Bernard Bulkin, its Commissioner for Energy and Transport, told Science & Public Affairs: ‘We have a problem with increasing emissions from aviation and it’s largely fuelled by discount airlines. We uphold the widely accepted principle of “polluter pays”, and that’s just not happening in aviation.’

He emphasised that the Commission supports emissions trading schemes, but reiterated the Oxford team’s conclusions that they are unlikely to achieve enough in time. The second phase of the ETS (which would include aviation) will not come on line until 2008 at the earliest and will most probably take until 2012.

‘There needs to be an increase in air passenger duty,’ said Dr Bulkin. ‘Money from such a duty should be hypothecated against a climate change research programme focused on technological advances that would help solve the problem.’ This, he suggested, would augment the UK’s strong position in the international airline industry by giving it valuable intellectual property that it could sell elsewhere.

Reference

1.  Predict and Decide: Aviation, Climate Change and Policy report

Vanessa Spedding is Shorts editor