Eurocontrol Close To Approving ETS Support Facility

Eurocontrol appears to be close to approving the funding and development of its emissions trading scheme (ETS) support facility, which would give business aircraft operators a relatively cost-effective way of meeting their obligations to monitor, report and verify carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. A May 6 meeting of the air traffic management agency’s air navigation services board expressed support for the plan but deferred a final decision pending further negotiations to allay the concerns of Eurocontrol member state Ukraine. According to the European Business Aviation Association (EBAA), these negotiations could be completed within two weeks and it expects the ETS support facility to get the final go-ahead. EBAA said that, without the ETS support facility, it would be completely unworkable for “small emitters” such as business aviation operators to comply with the complex requirements of ETS. In these circumstances, EBAA threatened to advise operators to withdraw cooperation from the program and, effectively, refuse to comply. The support facility is effectively a tool that provides an easy way to calculate CO2 emissions and, since the data is drawn from Eurocontrol’s flight-plan database, there should be no need to pay to have it independently verified.