Ministers know emissions trading is a red herring and won't work
Inter-industry carbon shuffling and optimistic figures mask the true extent of envionmental damage caused by flying
George Monbiot
Tuesday December 19, 2006
The Guardian
I suppose I should be flattered. In a speech to fellow airline bosses a few days ago, Martin Broughton, the chief executive of British Airways, announced that the primary challenge for the industry is to "isolate the George Monbiots of this world". That shouldn't be difficult. For a terrifying spectre, I'm feeling pretty lonely. Almost everyone in politics appears to want to forget about aviation's impact on the environment.
On Wednesday the secretary of state for communities launched a bold plan to make new homes more energy efficient. She claims it will save 7m tonnes of carbon. On Thursday Douglas Alexander, the transport secretary, announced that he would allow airports to keep growing: by 2030 the number of passengers will increase from 228 million to 465 million. As a result, according to a report commissioned by the Department for Environment, carbon emissions will rise by between 22m and 36m tonnes. So much for joined-up government.
The government says it will cut carbon dioxide emissions by 60% between 1990 and 2050. Last month it promised to introduce a climate change bill, which will make this target legally binding. Douglas Alexander's decision ensures that the new law will be broken.
A 60% cut means that our emissions by 2050 must amount to no more than 65m tonnes of carbon (MtC). The "best case" figures produced by the Department for Transport would see emissions from air transport rising from 4.6 to 15.7 MtC - or 24% of the target for the whole economy. According to the House of Commons environmental audit committee, "this is likely to be a very substantial understatement".
The Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research estimates that the UK's aeroplane emissions are more likely to amount to 32 MtC by 2050, or 49% of the target. The report produced for the Department for Environment, by researchers at ManchesterMetropolitanUniversity, calculates that they will rise to between 29.8 and 44.4 MtC by 2050, or 46-68% of the target. This, they say, is an underestimate, as they don't include unscheduled flights.
None of these calculations takes into account the other greenhouse gases aircraft produce. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, these create a global-warming effect, 2.7 times as great as carbon dioxide alone. Nor do the calculations recognise the fact that 70% of people flying out of the UK live in this country: all the estimates give the UK a 50% share of the flights landing or taking off here, rather than 70%. Throw these numbers into the equation, and you discover that aviation will account for between 91% and 258% of the greenhouse gases the UK will be permitted, under the new law, to produce in 2050. So how does the government navigate this contradiction? It's simple. It doesn't include international aircraft emissions in its target. Whatever their impact on the world's atmosphere might be, they don't officially exist.
No one now pretends that the industry can design its way out of this. The Department for Transport's wildly optimistic figure (a mere 91% of the UK's target) assumes improvements in efficiency that most observers believe will be impossible to realise. Jet engines consume 70% less fuel than they did 40 years ago; now they have pretty well reached their limits, while radical new aircraft designs and new fuels are, at best, several decades away from commercialisation. Even Martin Broughton admits that the airlines' fuel-efficiency gains "are likely to be outweighed by future growth". So the government relies on two other mechanisms: taxation and trading. It knows that neither of them will work.
Gordon Brown announced two weeks ago that he will double air-passenger duty, from £5 to £10. This merely reverses the cut that he made in 2001. In its white paper on aviation, the Transport Department investigated the effect of a bigger levy - a 100% fuel tax. This, it found, would increase the airlines' costs by 10%. But the growth of the no-frills carriers would be sufficient to offset the price rise, ensuring that there was no suppression of demand. Air-passenger duty might begin to bite at 10 times its current level. Is there anyone in government who has the guts to make that happen?
Brown's pathetic levy is counteracted by subsidies that he has managed, so far, to keep mostly hidden from public view. It turns out that the government has been authorising "route development funds" to establish "new links from regional airports". European rules permit governments to provide up to 50% of the start-up costs for regional airports and their new connections. Last week, for example, the Guardian reported that Derry City Council has been secretly giving Ryanair £1.3m a year. Our money is being used to subsidise climate change.
Tomorrow the European Union will wave its wand and make the airlines' carbon emissions magically disappear. It will incorporate them into the European emissions trading scheme. According to Douglas Alexander, this is "the most efficient and cost-effective way to ensure that the sector plays its part in tackling climate change". The airlines can keep growing, he argues, as long as they buy carbon permits from other industries, who can cut their output more cheaply. All that counts is that the European economy as a whole is reducing its emissions - it doesn't matter how they are distributed.
So how is this going to work if aviation accounts for 258% of all the greenhouse gases the target permits us to produce? Or even 91%? Again, there is sleight of hand involved. The other greenhouse gases don't count - the trading scheme recognises only carbon. But even if we were to accept its restricted terms, why should aviation force the rest of the European economy to reduce its emissions much faster than the average? Is flying more important than heating and lighting?
You can shuffle carbon between different industries when the overall reduction you are trying to achieve is just 8%, and still stay within the cap. But when you go much beyond that point, as the EU must in 2012, almost every industry will have to start making cuts of its own. So what happens when the growth in flights outstrips the cuts the other industries can make? How will the airlines cut their emissions in order to stay within the scheme? If the government knows, it hasn't told us.
Douglas Alexander knows as well as I do that emissions trading is a red herring. In his new report is a table showing what would happen if trading raised the price of carbon to the government's upper estimate of £140 a tonne by 2030 (32 times the current price). It would mean that instead of 465m tickets sold in 2030, there would be 455m. That sorts it out then.
The only certain means by which the growth of flights can be curtailed is by restricting the capacity of our airports. Aviation expands to fill the available landing space. Unless the government's decision to double the size of the UK's airports is reversed, the rest of its climate change programme will be a waste of time.
Come on out British Airways, Virgin, Ryanair, easyJet, BMI, the British government, the opposition and most of middle England. I've got you surrounded.
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Response:
Britain can't save the planet on its own
Unilateral action on carbon emissions will achieve little. We need a global effort, says Douglas Alexander
Friday December 22, 2006
The Guardian
George Monbiot asserts that the EU emissions trading scheme is a red herring (Ministers know emissions trading is a red herring and won't work, December 19). The truth is the argument that he puts - that Britain should, or could, tackle aviation emissions on its own - is the diversion.
There is no question that combating climate change is the most serious challenge we as a society face, and that aviation has a key role to play. Monbiot's position on aviation, as he explained two months ago (Drastic action on climate change is needed now - and here's the plan, October 31), is to cut the UK's aviation capacity by 90%. That flies in the face of the approach that Nicholas Stern outlined in his report.
Stern emphasised the need for multilateral, not unilateral, action on aviation. He also particularly emphasised the importance of an economy-wide approach, through emissions trading and taxation, to deliver the global reductions in emissions we all need, rather than sectoral targets. Monbiot's proposals are dramatic, but what would they do for the environment?
At present all Britain's carbon dioxide emissions amount to 2% of the world's global emissions. Aviation contributes 7.5% of all this country's emissions - just 0.15% of the global total. To put that in perspective, five of Britain's power stations together produce more CO2 than aviation.
Monbiot's plans would have potentially devastating consequences for the economy and therefore our ability to tackle climate change seriously. But the impact they would have on global emissions would be minuscule.
And while Monbiot would have us do that, he offers nothing on what should be done internationally when, for example, China is building 49 new airports and expanding another 71.
But this week's news that aviation is to be included in the EU emissions trading scheme is a development which really can help change the world, and was an important step on the path outlined by Stern.
Yes, we would have liked it to start earlier than 2011. Yes, we need to see exactly what the detail is. And yes, the ultimate aim is a global trading scheme. But far from being a "red herring", as Monbiot asserts, this is a more ambitious, practical and effective response to aviation emissions than his.
Monbiot's approach might make headlines but it cannot secure the international action we need. Working for international agreement is not a cop-out. It is the harder task but the only way we will get global action.
That is why I recently called for the Chicago Convention, which regulates international aviation, to be reformed to meet these challenges. That convention was signed during the second world war, when Britain stood alone against an international threat. Monbiot seems to want to take the same approach for aviation and climate change.
I believe a finer hour for Britain will be leading the international community in finding a global solution to a global problem. This week we took an important step towards that goal.
· Douglas Alexander is secretary of state for transport