Airlines may have to add the cost of emission credits into their ticket prices beginning in 2021, thanks to a new global agreement finalized on Thursday to cut carbon emissions from jet air planes.
The White House praised the agreement as an important milestone in fighting the threat of global warming, which the majority of scientists blame on fossil fuel emissions, such as those that come from the back end of a jet engine.
The agreement was adopted in Montreal, Canada, on Thursday between 191 countries that decided that a “global market-based measure to reduce carbon emissions” was the best way forward to combat climate change from the aerospace sector, according to a White House fact sheet.
“Today’s action builds on last year’s historic Paris Agreement and demonstrates continued American leadership and global momentum behind ambitious action to address climate change,” the White House said.
The agreement was adopted at the 39th meeting of the International Civil Aviation Organization, a grouping formed under the auspices of the United Nations to devise a way to cut emissions from the airline industry while advancing new clean energy technologies for the aerospace sector.
The 196 countries that agreed to last December’s Paris climate accord did not include emissions reductions from international flights in their policies and plans to meet emission reductions under the agreement, fearing the creation of a patchwork of emission policies.
The White House said this was a mistake that Thursday’s agreement will change. “The world’s nations have now agreed to an ambitious yet pragmatic approach to using market principles to constrain emissions from the international aviation sector,” it said.
Without including international flights in cutting carbon emissions, the growth in emissions would have threatened “the international community’s ability to meet the Paris Agreement’s ambitious temperature goals and combat global climate change,” the White House said.
The Montreal agreement would set the peak for emissions from the sector in 2020, when airlines will be obligated to ratchet down their emissions, or buy emission credits to offset how much carbon dioxide they are emitting. By 2027, all countries with international carriers will be required to cut emissions below 2020 levels.
Environmentalists expressed disappointment that the airline agreement struck out language at the last minute that would have directly aligned it with the Paris accord’s explicit goal of keeping the Earth’s temperature from rising 2 degrees Celsius over the next few decades.
The White House said a key part of the market-based system will require airlines covered by the agreement to begin purchasing emissions offset credits beginning in 2021 to help account for emissions above 2020 levels.
“The measure will be thoroughly reviewed every three years to consider improvements based on experience implementing the measure,” according to the fact sheet, which emphasizes wide support by countries to participate in the credit program. “By putting a price on carbon emissions from aviation, this market-based measure will provide an incentive to further technology improvements, air traffic efficiency improvements, and the development and use of sustainable alternative fuels.”
It is not certain how these added measures, in addition to need for airlines to purchase credit, will be reflected in additional costs to the consumer and ticker purchaser.
Many airlines and jet manufacturers have been making their aircraft more fuel efficient for years due to fluctuations in the cost of oil in the last decade. Manufacturers have been exploring the use of alternative, lower carbon fuels for at least a decade, but those efforts are still in the test phase. Electric-powered airliners are an idea being tinkered with, but the technology is nowhere near commercial.
