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July 10, 2009, U.K. - Following continued delays in the publication of the ‘definitive’ operator
list by the European Commission, the U.K. Department for Transport (DfT)
has decided to postpone the implementation of the U.K.’s programme,
which encompasses more operators than any other EU Member State. This
means that the planned 31st August deadline for ETS registration now
will not apply, and the U.K. deadline will now be set roughly three months
after the publication of the Commission’s list to allow time for
the U.K. legislation to become official. The Commission’s operator
list is now anticipated to be published in early to mid August, although
this puts it in the middle of the European vacation period so that date
may itself be at risk. If the EC list is published on schedule, the U.K.
deadline could now be some time in November 2009 at the earliest.
An official communication from the DfT and the Department of Energy and
Climate Change (DECC) to all known U.K. operators will be issued later
this week, and will include details of where to view and download their
draft legislation so that operators can become fully versed in its requirements
while the legislation passes through governmental approval.
The Commission is also yet to publish two other vital pieces of information,
namely a) a decision on the use of Pagoda, EuroControl’s fuel consumption
estimation tool, which is a vital component of a simplified system for
small operators, and b) the overall aviation ‘benchmark’ of
fuel use which becomes the basis of the future emissions cap. Both of
these elements are vital to the success of the scheme, but Pagoda approval
is especially important for BBGA members as without it small operators
will be forced to use a cumbersome, expensive and bureaucratic system
of fuel measurement which will cost many times the cost of the CO2 emissions
alone.
BBGA will publish further updates as we lead up to the launch of the
U.K. programme, and will be assisting members to become compliant with
the U.K.’s version of the scheme through the most cost-effective
methods. In the meantime, operators expecting to be included in the scheme
should ensure that they have a documented system in place which will
capture aircraft type, registration, payload and city pairs for all flights
to, from or within the EU so that this process can be used as part of
their future compliance.
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