Emissions Trading Scheme - Europa kan bli tvunget til å trekke kravene

Europe Seeks U.S. Help as Airline Emissions Dispute Intensifies

By JAMES KANTER

Published: May 16, 2013

BRUSSELS — A dispute between Chinese and Indian airlines and Europe over greenhouse gas rules could be a precursor to broader international resistance to the European system at a global conference later this year in Montreal.

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Starting in late September, the International Civil Aviation Organization, a United Nations agency, will supervise discussions in the Canadian city, during which the European system is expected to meet severe criticism from many other nations.

Without an agreement on a global system, the European Union may have to drop the airline component from one of its signature projects: its effort to lead the world in controlling the emission of greenhouse gases, which are linked to global warming.

To head off that humiliating prospect, senior European officials have already been courting support from the United States.

Such backing could be vital for Europe, which has offered to relax or even abolish portions of its emission program — which aims to make airlines accountable for emissions on all flights landing or taking off from airports in the Union — if a more environmentally effective alternative can be found among an even larger group of countries.

Last month, José Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission, told Secretary of State John Kerry in Brussels that creating an effective global system for airline emissions would represent a unique opportunity to break the stranglehold that emerging nations like China and India have long exercised over international climate negotiations. Those nations have refused to submit their industries to the same environmental strictures as those faced by companies in developed nations.

The standoff has bedeviled climate negotiations since the 1990s, when expectations that industrialized nations should bear the burden of emission cuts began colliding with the realization that some developing nations were rapidly becoming the world’s biggest polluters.

The U.S. State Department did not respond to requests for comment on how Mr. Kerry viewed Mr. Barroso’s request. But Europe probably will face an uphill battle in trying to win U.S. backing.

Last year, President Barack Obama signed the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme Prohibition Act, an American law forbidding U.S. airlines from participating in the E.U. system. This year, U.S. officials plan to press nations at the U.N.’s civil aviation meetings to consider a system that would operate only within a state’s sovereign airspace, falling far short of European objectives.

John M. Broder contributed reporting from Washington.