Europe's emission scheme to cost Emirates $1b

Emirates, Dubai's flagship airline, estimates that it will lose up to $1 billion (Dh3.67 billion) during the first eight to ten years of the European Union Carbon Emission Scheme. A senior official said yesterday that the controversial scheme — which will require airlines to pay fees for all flights to and from Europe — will have a serious impact on the airline, which has dozens of routes to European countries."I think we'll lose somewhere in the $500 million to $1 billion range over the first eight years or first decade of the scheme," said Andrew Parker, senior vice-president of Public, Industry, International and Environmental Affairs."Europe is very large in terms of our global network. This will have a very significant financial impact on Emirates. We'll have to pay tens of millions of dollars in the first few years, which will increase to hundreds of billions of dollars," he added. According to Parker, 24 per cent of Emirate's global operations are in Europe. Starting from January next year, flights to and from Europe will have to buy permits from the EU's Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) for 15 per cent of the carbon emissions they produce during the flight.Airlines will also face fines of up to €100 (Dh520.6) for every tonne of carbon dioxide they emit above the limit. The ETS, part of the EU's climate plan, was first implemented in 2005 and includes more than 11,000 utilities and manufacturers. The participating companies have to pay a fine or pay for a permit if they exceed their carbon dioxide emissions quota. International airlines have argued against this scheme since it was announced. "We were one of the first airlines to sign off with the legal requirements because we had no other choice. But we did so in protest," said Parker. "Many airlines and many countries around the world had a strong disagreement with the European commission with the unilateral nature of this emission trading scheme," he added. "In other words, we did not feel it represented the best global approach to try and reduce aviation's impact. We have a problem when one country or one group of countries decides that it will have a regional or local tax scheme."According to Parker, their biggest concern is that the money raised from the programme is not going back into the aviation industry to improve carbon efficiency and develop environmental programmes. It will, instead, go to the governments for local infrastructure projects.A new initiative launched by Emirates in order to minimise their carbon emission is the Indian Ocean Strategic Partnership to Reduce Emissions (Inspire). The aim is to fly direct optimum routes based on existing meteorological and airspace conditions instead of flying the designated air routes in order to save on flight time and fuel. "We started this in 2003 and we realised we could gain operational advantage by routing over the Indian Ocean where there's not much traffic. It's a gradual process and we are also one of two carriers working on an Iflex project with IATA over Africa," said Captain Alan Stealey, division senior vice president of Flight Operations at Emirates. The initiative has started with two test flights, one from Dubai to Brisbane and the second from Perth to Dubai. These two flights resulted in combined total savings of over 6,250 litres of fuel and more than 16,000kg of carbon dioxide emissions. Steps taken to improve fuel efficiency have produced results in Emirates' first Environmental Report. The report, which covers the period between April 1, 2010 and March 31, this year, shows Emirate's fuel efficiency was 4.12 litres per 100 passenger-kilometres (PK), 25 per cent better than the IATA industry average. Emirates' overall carbon dioxide efficiency rate was 0.75kg CO2 per tonne-kilometre (TK), 26 per cent better than the IATA industry average of 1.02kg CO2 per TK. From / Gulf News