Back to Air Transport IT Review - Issue 1, May 2010

The challenge of carbon emissions

By Frederic Falise
Director, Environmental Programme, SITA

The challenge of carbon emissions

Since 1 January, every airline using European Union (EU) airspace must report carbon emissions and fuel burn for all flights. The EU has already determined the emissions it will allocate to aviation through to 2020. How that is divided between airlines depends on payloads reported during 2010 − 'the benchmarking year'. Any mistake in the payload reporting will have significant financial impact.

When airlines heard that the EU would include air transport in the European Trading Scheme (ETS), most focused their efforts on combating the inclusion itself. Of particular concern was the fact that the ETS would cover any flight anywhere in the world if it started or finished in an EU state. Inclusion was feared more than implementation.

Once it became clear that the EU would stick to its decision, from a general perspective it appeared that data demands were already covered. After all, intense competition and existing safety-oriented requirements meant that a great deal of operational data was already available. Surely this would be enough to comply? And yet ...

Dangers ahead

... why are so many airlines struggling to meet the EU-ETS criteria?

Some airlines were cautious about the preparation involved - and engaged with SITA during 2009 to benefit from the company's Aircraft Emissions Manager community solution. However, since early January this year, SITA has been called to audit, assist and advise several airlines that only recently recognized the significance of complying with the new regulation.

Based on what we have heard and seen, we believe that many airlines are facing potential disaster. The EU-ETS could result in substantial legal battles around the accuracy and benchmarking aspect of the scheme.

There is a subtle difference between compliance with the EU-ETS and existing processes for collecting operational data required for security and operational improvements -- the exhaustiveness of the data to be collected. Complying with EU-ETS means collecting data for every flight every day of the year.

With 80% of fuel burn data, you can get an accurate view of operational performance. But that's not what is required from the EU-ETS - they require 100%. Those responsible for the EU-ETS verification and regulatory processes are unlikely to accept incomplete levels of measurement. We may even find airlines filing complaints against competitors for tweaking the benchmarking rules, in order to gain a competitive advantage or to stall the scheme.

What is payload?

A further problem arises: the regulation wants to reward airlines that successfully reduce their emissions per tonne/kilometer transported. This sounds logical and straightforward. But the definition of payload is understood as the load for which someone has paid for its transportation, be that people or goods.

That takes no account, for example, of free tickets issued to frequent flyers, or open questions relating to air marshals. What about airline ground engineers taken from one airport to fill a gap at another? Should they count as passengers or not?

The existing revenue accounting system cannot provide the data needed at the level of detail required. The departure control system and the weight and balance system are often excellent sources of information. However the data can be difficult to exploit as its format varies according to the ground handlers who code the data into the system.
With data needing to be verified for airlines operating outside Europe using differing management types and systems, there is the potential for massive difficulty.

Any solution in sight?

Technology can provide a pivotal support to ensure fairness of regulation implementation as well as a cost effective infrastructure to support the regulation. We believe that monitoring can be greatly simplified, reporting achieved in a nano second and verification embedded into the first two. This becomes of increased importance since we may expect new emissions trading schemes to be introduced in other regions.

The air transport industry can demonstrate to other sectors how smart use of technology can facilitate compliance with environmental regulations. We would gain passenger trust and achieve compliance at reduced cost.

In conforming to the requirements of the EU-ETS, airlines can develop their own expertise and products, or adopt a pay-per-use scheme from a service provider. Our own Aircraft Emissions Manager (AEM) is the world's first software tool to accurately measure carbon emissions and tonne/kilometers from aircraft operators - and, crucially, it is community-owned and entirely neutral. It is also designed to support airlines subject to emission trading schemes that may be introduced by other countries and regions.

When will we hit peak oil?

Pressure on the air transport industry to establish alternatives to conventional hydrocarbons for fuel has been upped by comments coming from the International Energy Agency. Fatih Birol, the Agency's chief economist, was quoted in The Economist newspaper to the effect that, if no big new discoveries are made, "the output of conventional oil will peak in 2020 if oil demand grows on a business-as-usual basis."


Ironically, however, the Agency also reckons that if the global community can restrict the increase in global temperatures to 2ºC, global demand for oil will reduce, so pushing back the peak-oil date. As The Economist noted: "Action on climate change may yet save the world from an early supply crunch".

Listen to article

Please, rate this page: