The list to be published by the middle of August

The Aug. 31 deadline for operators into the EU to submit their monitoring plans under the Emissions Trading System has been thrown into confusion by the UK's announcement that it does not have "a firm and agreed list" of operators to be regulated by each member state.

According to Eco-Aviation Today, the list was "originally scheduled to be published in February" but now is expected by the middle of August. "Until this list is formally published we are legally unable to lay the first stage regulations transposing the Aviation EU ETS Directive. We remain committed to including aviation in the EU ETS from 2012," the UK government said.

The government has finalized the first-stage regulations transposing the ETS Directive and the country's Dept. of Energy and Climate Change has published the final draft of its first stage regulations on its website, but for "information only."

After the EU publishes the final airline/operator lists, the regulations will be put before parliament and these will come into force 21 days later and require aircraft operators to submit emissions monitoring plans to their UK regulator within eight weeks. The effect of the delay is to extend out to the end of October the submission of the monitoring and benchmarking plans for operators to claim free allowances up to 2020.

There also appears to be some confusion among member states about the legality of the operator lists already published by the EU. Sebastian Gallehr of German consultancy Gallehr + Partner said in a statement that "it could be argued that the EC had already published its list of operators and it was each operator's own responsibility to identify whether it is affected by the EU ETS or not."

The UK is the major administrator of the program, with more than 25% of the 2,700-plus operators identified. The country's position also has a serious knock-on effect in that regulators are supposed to process and approve or reject submissions by Dec. 31, with the crucial first monitoring period beginning next Jan. 1. It is understood that France will not postpone its deadline but Italy is well behind while Germany has followed the UK's lead.

IATA claims that many of its 169 members that are affected have not been contacted by the governments that are administering them. There also are significant variations in fines for noncompliance with the "deadline," with the UK proposing a £50,000 ($83,400) fine while Frances says it will not fine.

Separately, the EC will not announce a 2012 emissions cap for flights into and out of the EU in August as promised because it needs more time for verification of the data that its calculations are based on. Airline emissions were to be capped at 97% of the average 2004-06 levels in 2012. The EC will announce its cap in the third quarter.

Source: Transportweekly