EU walks back on key aviation climate law and excludes long-haul flights from monitoring scheme

Long-haul flights leaving or entering Europe cause two thirds of Europe’s aviation contrail climate impact, according to new data released by green group Transport & Environment (T&E) [1][2]. But these flights have been removed from the scope of a non-CO₂ monitoring scheme that will kickstart in January 2025. They will only be monitored in two years time when the scope will be extended to all flights departing from or landing in Europe.

T&E calls upon the European Commission to reverse this decision after it closes the public consultation on the subject on 29 of July. This ruling will further delay the understanding of non-CO₂ emissions and hinder action on addressing aviation’s full climate impact.

After presenting the details of its Monitoring, Reporting and Verification (MRV) framework on non-CO₂ the European Commission has limited the scope of the scheme in the first two years to flights within the European Economic Area and to the UK and Switzerland. This represents a mere 33% of Europe’s aviation-related contrail impact. This decision is contrary to the EU ETS agreement adopted by EU lawmakers in 2022 and can be traced back to strong lobbying by legacy airlines who fiercely opposed the MRV.

The data also ranks all routes to, from and within the EEA in terms of contrail warming, and finds that the top 20 most polluting ones would not fall under the reduced scope. For instance, the two most polluting routes, the return flights Amsterdam-Shanghai and Luxembourg-Hong Kong, will not be monitored as of January 2025. Among the top 100 most polluting routes, only five are covered by the scope, T&E finds.

Krisztina Toth, aviation policy manager at T&E, said: “The European Commission has bowed to pressure from long-haul airlines, potentially breaching an agreement signed into law in 2022. This u-turn means it will miss out on the opportunity to be a frontrunner on addressing the climate impact of contrails. Delaying the full-scope monitoring by two years means delaying our understanding of contrails and ultimately how to reduce them. Time we cannot afford will now be wasted”.

A legal analysis, commissioned by T&E and carried out by legal experts Opportunity Green warns of the potential exceeding of the Commission’s powers. The delayed introduction of non-CO₂ reporting for all flights departing from or arriving in the EU runs contrary to Article 14(5) of the ETS Directive, which requires such reporting to begin from 1 January 2025. It amends the provisions of the legislative act by changing the scope of reporting at different dates. The limited scope presented by the Commission is set out in an implementing act. Implementing acts are intended to merely implement the provisions of the “parent act” - but by modifying the scope, certain provisions of the “parent act” (i.e. the ETS Directive) will be changed or impacted, the legal analysis finds, which appears to be contrary to the intention of the co-legislators.

David Kay, legal director at Opportunity Green, said: “The European Commission’s proposal runs contrary to the dates and scope already laid out in the Directive. It’s not clear what justification the Commission has for changing the scope and dates, and this risks exceeding the Commission’s implementing powers so we urge it to reconsider.”

A coalition of NGOs, airlines and other aviation industry actors came together in May to call upon the European Commission to maintain the full scope of the non-CO₂ MRV. The coalition outlined in a joint letter that excluding long-haul routes from the MRV goes against the original agreement between the co-legislators.

Krisztina Toth concluded: “We call upon the European Commission to return to the original text and not further delay the monitoring of contrails. A mere monitoring tool should not be the cause of such controversy. Yet, long haul airlines have lobbied hard to derail it. Why would the aviation industry not want to access the very data that would enable them to address a large share of their climate issue in the next decade?”

The climate impact of non-CO₂ effects from aviation, including nitrogen oxides emissions and contrail formation, has been known since 1999. Current scientific consensus, gathered by the European Aviation Safety Agency in its 2020 report, highlighted that their impact could be up to three times worse than that of CO₂. And, although scientific understanding on non-CO₂ is still progressing to this day, including all flights in the monitoring system is an important way forward to further deepen knowledge and to kick off efforts to reduce these climate warming emissions.

ENDS

Note to editors

[1] Europe here refers to the EEA (European Economic Area). Long-haul flights leaving or entering Europe means flights leaving or entering the EEA, with the exception of flights from the EEA to the UK and Switzerland.

[2] Teoh et al. data for 2019 includes flights between the EEA and Russia as well as Ukraine, which did not take place in 2023. Nonetheless, those flights in 2019 represented less than 3% of Europe’s total contrail climate impact.