Committee on Climate Change

The 2003 Air Transport White Paper proposed that there could be airport runway capacity expansions at Edinburgh, Heathrow and Stansted, but at no other airports. In January 2009, the previous Government decided in favour of a third runway at Heathrow and in favour of increasing slot capacity there from 480,000 to 605,000. 

It decided however that any decisions on the allocation of further slot capacity (to the maximum theoretical potential of 702,000 with a third runway in place) should be subject to recommendations from the Committee on Climate Change in 2020 on whether further expansion then appears compatible with the target of restricting CO₂ emissions to a maximum 37.5 MtCO₂ in 2050. 

In addition, the Terms of Reference for the CCC’s 2009 Aviation Report asked the Committee to consider “the implications (for meeting the 2050 target) of further aviation expansion in the 2020s”.

The key implication from our analysis is that:

The reductions required under the Kyoto Protocol include domestic aviation but exclude international emissions from this sector (as well as emissions from international shipping). The UNFCCC has given responsibility for international aviation to the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO).
 

Going forward, it is essential that both domestic and international aviation are covered by  a mechanism, or mechanisms, to reduce global emissions:

Global CO₂ emissions from aviation (domestic and international) are currently 0.5-0.7GtCO₂, which is equivalent to about 1.9 - 2.4% of total global CO₂ emissions. Global international aviation accounts for roughly half of total aviation emissions.  

In the absence of policy action, future projections of aviation emissions suggest that global aviation emissions could reach 2.4 GtCO₂ in 2050. This would be around a four-fold increase on today’s levels.

Global aviation (both domestic and international together) currently represents around 2% of global CO₂ permitted in 2050. This would mean other sectors having to make much deeper cuts in their emissions in order to meet a global emissions reduction target of 50% by 2050.

 

In a letter last year to the Secretaries of State for Transport and Energy and Climate Change, the Committee set-out their advice to the previous Government on what options should be considered for reducing global aviation emissions. The former Government asked for this advice ahead of the climate change summit in Copenhagen in December 2009.

The Committee advised that: 

The CCC has conducted a review into UK Aviation emissions to analyse how emissions from UK aviation can return to 2005 levels or lower by 2050. This also includes analysis of how technology can be used to reduce emissions from planes. The insights from  this report are  relevant to the global context. 

There are several ways in which international aviation emissions can be allocated. These include bunker fuels and nationality of the airline. These and other methodologies suggest that the UK is responsible for around 8% of global emissions from international aviation. The same methodologies give considerable variation for other countries’ shares of emissions, and there is no international agreement on an appropriate allocation methodology.

 

The budgets, in line with the Committee’s advice, exclude emissions from international aviation and shipping for the time being given the complexity arising from differences in appropriate emissions allocation methodologies. Aviation is, however, included within the EU’s 20% and 30% GHG emission reduction targets. Our budget proposals were based on that framework and do, therefore, implicitly take account of international aviation emissions.