Obama administration takes aim at airline emissions
The government is proposing to regulate aircraft emissions in much the same way as power plants, saying they are a threat to human health because they contain pollutants that help cause global warming and therefore should be regulated.
The Environmental Protection Agency announcement Wednesday clears the way for "the development and implementation of a domestic aircraft standard, in accordance with U.S. law" and with the process underway by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO).
U.S. regulations wouldn't apply to small piston-engine planes or military aircraft.
The ICAO, a U.N. agency, has been working for several years on developing global aircraft emissions standards for the first time. The ICAO standards are expected to be adopted in early 2016 but some environmentalists have warned they won't go into effect until 2020 or afterward - possibly as late as 2025.
Aviation accounts for 3 percent of total carbon emissions but is the fastest-growing source.
According to the EPA, U.S. aircraft emit roughly 11 percent of greenhouse gas emissions from the U.S. transportation sector and 29 percent of greenhouse gas emissions from all aircraft globally.
Airlines for America (A4A), the industry trade organization for the leading U.S. airlines, said it welcomed EPA's willingness to work towards developing an international carbon dioxide standard for new aircraft. It also said it supported the ICAO's goals to achieve 1.5 percent annual average fuel efficiency improvements through 2020 and carbon neutral growth from 2020.
"Aviation is a global industry, making it critical that aircraft emissions standards continue to be agreed upon at the international level," said A4A Vice President of Environmental Affairs Nancy Young. "While we believe that any regulatory action must be consistent with both the agency's authority under the Clean Air Act and the future ICAO standard, today's action reconfirms the EPA's commitment to the ICAO process for achieving a global CO2 standard for new aircraft."
Young said the U.S. aviation has improved fuel efficiency over 120 percent since 1978, saving over 3.8 billion metric tons of CO2 - the equivalent to taking 23 million cars off the road each of those years.
"The technology, operations and infrastructure initiatives that our airlines are undertaking to further address GHG emissions are designed to responsibly and effectively limit their carbon emissions and potential climate change impacts while allowing them to continue to serve as drivers of U.S. and global economies," Young said.
The move to tackle aircraft emissions follows a proposal last year from the EPA to cut emissions from coal-fired power plants 30 percent from 2005 levels by 2030. It also has vowed to double fuel efficiency standards to 54.5 mpg by 2025, which it says would cut vehicle emissions in half.
All this comes as the United States has vowed to cut greenhouse gas emissions 26 percent to 28 percent by 2025, as part of an effort to build support for an international treaty in Paris later this year on regulating these heat-trapping gases.
"Today's action supports the goals of the President's Climate Action Plan to reduce emissions from large sources of carbon pollution," the EPA said in a statement.