The United Nations International Civil Aviation Organization has agreed to drop 2020 from its baseline used to calculate the global industry's carbon offsetting requirement.
The move by the UN's specialist aviation agency means airlines will avoid an estimated $15 billion additional burden for buying carbon offsets that could have resulted from including 2020 in the baseline calculation.
"Council States today have made a measured assessment and have come to the most reasonable solution available given our current and very extraordinary circumstances," ICAO Council President Salvatore Sciacchitano said in a statement.
"[T]he Council determined that the value of 2019 emissions shall be used for 2020 emissions to avoid inappropriate economic burden on the aviation industry, for the CORSIA implementation during the pilot phase from 2021 to 2023," ICAO said.
The ICAO's Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation (CORSIA) had originally been designed to use a baseline of average CO2 emissions from 2019 and 2020.
With the industry's CO2 emissions set to fall sharply in 2020 due to the international coronavirus lockdowns, including both years in the baseline would have set an unusually low baseline from which airlines would have to offset their emissions, increasing the cost burden on the industry.
That prompted the International Air Transport Association to call on ICAO to use 2019 alone as the baseline. IATA said May 19 the global aviation industry could save $15 billion in offsetting costs if ICAO dropped 2020 emissions from the baseline calculation.
"In addition to the safeguard during the pilot phase, there could be implications for the subsequent phases of CORSIA in light of how the sector's recovery would take place, and more data and analysis of the situation and impacts on CORSIA will be needed," ICAO said.
The European Council, representing the 27 EU member states, on June 9 also backed the use of 2019 as the CORSIA baseline.
The CORSIA system is part of the aviation industry's plan to achieve low-carbon growth by making airlines pay to offset any CO2 emissions above the 2019 baseline.
In practice, it will mean a relatively low offsetting requirement in the early years of the system's operation, but would be expected to increase over time if the sector's emissions continued to grow, spurring increasing demand for carbon credits from emissions-offsetting projects.
Other measures being taken by ICAO to improve aviation's environmental impact include the use of sustainable fuels, improved technology and standards and operational improvements.
Since CO2 emissions from international aviation do not fall within governments' national emissions accounting systems, countries agreed to address the sector's emissions through ICAO under international treaties including the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement on climate change.
