Walsh urges EC to move quickly
By Perry Flint, ATW Online | Apr. 13, 2006
British Airways CEO Willie Walsh yesterday urged the European Commission to move forward with plans to bring EU airlines within the emissions trading scheme "as soon as the technical details can be resolved and political agreement reached."At the same time, he urged the EC to "go for simplicity." For example, the scheme should apply, "initially at least," to flights that start and end within the EU and not try to include non-EU flights, "which could delay implementation for years."
Speaking at Ireland's National Management Conference in Co Wicklow, Walsh also said the ETS should not attempt to address the upper atmosphere effects of aircraft, "on which there is little scientific consensus and which are not covered by the Kyoto Protocol." Initial carbon allocations to airlines should be based on their emissions performance, not an auction system.
He cautioned that regulators should not overestimate the environmental impact of commercial aviation. He said that based on recent calculations, the UK generates 2% of global CO2 emissions while "aviation, including international flights, is responsible for just over 5% of UK emissions." That means the total contribution of UK aviation to global emissions is around 0.1%. "In other words, if we took the most extreme policy option imaginable and banned all future domestic and international flights from the UK, the effect on global warming would be miniscule."
Turning to nonenvironmental topics, Walsh called for a third runway at London Heathrow to maintain the UK's competitiveness in world aviation and said it is "absolutely right" that the UK government should only permit the new runway as long as Heathrow's total noise footprint will not be greater than "in the baseline year of 2002 and local air pollution will not exceed strict new EU limits." He called those conditions "tough but achievable."