The Next Climate Policy Fight Could Be All About Airplane Emissions

Environmental groups are pledging to intensify their push on the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from aircraft in the wake of a new report showing no improvement in fuel efficiency from U.S. domestic airlines. 

The pledge comes one day after the International Council on Clean Transportation released a report investigating how airline fuel efficiency, and therefore carbon intensity, has changed since 2010. It found that although some airlines increased their fuel efficiency, others had drastic declines, making for a zero net gain in the fuel efficiency of U.S. domestic airlines from 2012 to 2013.

Vera Pardee, a staff attorney for the Center for Biological Diversity, told ThinkProgress on Thursday that the findings prove that airlines won’t take up fuel efficiency protocols voluntarily. And if airlines won’t do it themselves, the EPA needs to step in — and soon. 
    
“Efficiency efforts have completely stalled. They’re just not making any progress,” Pardee said. “The airlines keep telling us, don’t worry, hands off, we’re already doing everything we can to drive up fuel efficiency. But the report shows that’s just not happening, it’s just not true.”

There are a number of ways airlines can improve fuel efficiency, thereby reducing carbon emissions and costs (fuel represents around 40 percent of airline operating costs). These include adding a gear to turbofan engines, replacing engine parts, using biofuels, or market-based measures like cap and trade.

Working with environment group Friends of the Earth, Pardee said the groups would ramp up pressure on the EPA to develop some kind of requirements in two ways. One, by increasing public awareness, and the other by filing a lawsuit if the EPA does not make progress in issuing the regulations by January. 

Both the Center for Biological Diversity and Friends of the Earth have been pushing the EPA to regulate aircraft carbon emissions under the Clean Air Act since 2007, when the groups filed a lawsuit against the agency. Eventually, they won — four years later in 2011, the judge on the case found that the EPA must begin the process for crafting the regulations.

The first step in the process, Pardee said, is issuing an “endangerment finding,” which would essentially decide whether aircraft carbon emissions actually need to be regulated to protect public health and the environment. The EPA pledged that the endangerment finding would be completed by early 2014. But that hasn’t happened yet, and the groups threatened to sue the agency again in August over the delay.

- Source:  http://thinkprogress.org/aircraft-emissions