Memorandum submitted by the Manchester
Airports Group
The Manchester Airports Group (MAG) responded
to the Environmental Audit Committee's inquiry, Reducing carbon
emissions from Transport, earlier this year. Representatives
from MAG appeared before the Committee in July to give further
evidence.
The following comments build upon MAG's previous
evidence to the committee. In making these comments, we have limited
our response to part 1 of question 8: How should aviation be included
within the ETS?
MAG has lobbied the Government and EU institutions
for the inclusion of aviation into the European Emissions Trading
Scheme (ETS). We believe that aviation should be included in the
scheme at the earliest opportunity.
MAG supports an ETS based on the inclusion of
CO2 only, with appropriate flanking instruments to
tackle other pollutants. We favour open trading with other industries,
so that aviation could buy and sell allowances on the full open
EU market. We believe that, in principle, it should not matter
who causes the emissions (and buys permits) as long as total emissions
are kept within the cap. An open market is also likely to deliver
the most cost-effective emissions reductions. This is because
other sectors are better placed than aviation to cut their emissions.
We accept that the climate change impact of
aviation emissions go beyond C02 and would support the introduction
of measures to deal with other gases at a later stage, subject
to the strength of scientific evidence and the inclusion of other
industries too.
Aviation is an international business, and a
global scheme for trading emissions would be the ideal mechanism
for addressing carbon emissions. While international agreement
is unlikely in the short term, we believe that Europe could take
a lead in tackling emissions from intra-EU flights.
October 2006
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