CQ TODAY MIDDAY UPDATE
Oct. 2, 2009 – 2:38 p.m.
Airline Industry Wary of Proposed Cap-and-Trade System
The airline industry is pushing back against the Senate’s climate change bill, claiming a proposed cap-and-trade system could cost carriers them as much as $5 billion.
The most recent draft of the Senate bill by John Kerry , D-Mass., and Barbara Boxer , D-Calif., includes aircraft and aircraft engines in its emissions-trading plan. The language tracks with provisions in a climate change bill the House passed in June.
Earlier drafts of the Senate bill contained language that essentially directed the EPA and Federal Aviation Administration to draw up regulations for aviation’s greenhouse gas emissions as it saw fit.
Nancy Young, vice president for environmental affairs for the Air Transport Association (ATA), the major U.S. airlines’ trade group, said the new language would mean jet fuel sellers would have to purchase emissions credits, the cost of which would then be passed on to airlines at the point of sale.
“We will just have to pay a big fee to the fuel producers to cover that. So for us, it’s 100 percent coverage on day one of every drop of our fuel and that’s a huge deal,” Young said.
Airlines are not among those industries promised free allowances.
The ATA has also said carriers will have no way to discern how oil companies are paying for allowances — and how the costs are being passed on to them — without language mandating more pricing transparency.
Globally, the aviation industry is responsible for about 3.5 percent of the greenhouse gas emission and other agents, such as water vapor from hot exhausts, according to U.N. statistics last updated in 2007.
That is small compared with automobile emissions. But the real concern about aviation emissions involves the industry’s projected growth. The United Nations. estimates that by 2050, aviation could contribute up to 15 percent of the factors that lead to global climate change. The industry disputes this figure, placing it at about 5 percent.
Additionally, Young said having to pay that much extra money for fuel would hamper the industry from continuing to update fleets with more fuel efficient aircraft, and invest in alternative fuels.
Comments
Do you hear that huge sucking sound of American prosperity being given away? There is no question that becoming more energy efficient is crucial to America's long term prosperity. But Cap & Trade is a terribly destructive way of doing so. It ranks right next to so called Patent Reform in terms of undermining America's competitiveness. When transnational corporations are allowed to steal American ingenuity and transfer it to developing countries we lose jobs and tax base. If Cap & Trade is allowed it will, in addition to the huge capital outflow which oil represents, amount to another huge transfer of American wealth to developing countries and the outflow of capital will dwarf all existing welfare aid to the same countries who are in collusion with transnational corporations to unjustly profit at America's expense. Ronald J. Riley, I am speaking only on my own behalf. Affiliations: President - www.PIAUSA.org - RJR at PIAUSA.org Executive Director - www.InventorEd.org - RJR at InvEd.org Senior Fellow - www.PatentPolicy.org President - Alliance for American Innovation Caretaker of Intellectual Property Creators on behalf of deceased founder Paul Heckel Washington, DC Direct (810) 597-0194 / (202) 318-1595 - 9 am to 8 pm EST.
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