Aviation and "Emissions trading"

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Directive 2008/101/EC: Amendment of Directive 2003/87/EC so as to include Aviation activities in the EU Emissions Trading Scheme

 
On 24 October 2008 the European Council adopted Directive 2008/101/EC amending Directive 2003/87/EC so as to include aviation activities in the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS). This Directive was published in the Official Journal of the European Union on 13 January 2009 and became effective on 2 February 2009.
This website page reports the main references for the implementation of the emissions trading scheme extended to the aviation sector. For further information please check the European Commission's website, which includes all the processes for the inclusion of the aviation sector in the EU ETS.

 

 

 

Scope of Directive 2008/101/EC and participants

List of aircraft operators

All aircraft operators that perform an aviation activity listed in Annex I of Directive 2003/87/EC as amended by Directive 2008/101/EC are included in the emissions trading scheme, basically, all aircraft operators performing flights through Europe (European Economic Area – EEA, including EU + EFTA countries) or intercontinental flights to and from the EU-EEA are included in the emissions trading scheme.
The European Commission developed “Guidelines on the detailed interpretation of the aviation activities listed in Annex I to Directive 2003/87/EC”.
Based on the scope of Directive 2008/101/EC and on the methodology described in the document "Aircraft operator allocation by EC Member State (pdf, 215 KB)", the European Commission adopted annually a list of aircraft operators that have undertaken a relevant aviation activity on or after 1 January 2006, specifying the administering Member State for each aircraft operator. As a result of the extension of aviation part of EU ETS to EEA-EFTA countries (namely Iceland Liechtenstein and Norway), a revised list of aircraft operators (pdf, 3.786 MB) was adopted on 29 January 2013, as annex to Commission Regulation (EU) no. 109/2013 (pdf, 3.786 MB).
 

Prior Compliance List

On June 2013 the European Commission published an updated "prior compliance list" (pdf, 746 KB) including some aircraft operators who had not been included in the previous revised list of aircraft operators.
Aircraft operators who are included in this prior compliance list, and administered by Italy, are kindly asked to contact the Italian Competent Authority as soon as possible at the following email address: aviation-ets@mase.gov.it.

 

 

 

Italian Competent Authority

 
The National Italian Committee for the management and implementation of Directive 2003/87/EC ("Comitato nazionale per la gestione della direttiva 2003/87/CE e per il supporto nella gestione delle attività di progetto del protocollo di Kyoto" hereinafter also referred to as: “the Committee”) represents also the national Competent Authority for the implementation of Directive 2008/101/EC. On 6 August 2009 the Committee adopted Decision 027/2009 (pdf, 61 KB) in order to define urgent prescriptions for the implementation of Directive 2008/101/EC and to implement Commission Decision 2009/339/CE (pdf, 815 KB), amending Decision 2007/589/EC, on the inclusion of monitoring and reporting guidelines.

By means of Legislative Decree of 30 December 2010, no. 257 (pdf, 2.326 MB), amending Legislative Decree of 4 April 2006, no. 216 (pdf, 150 KB), Italy has implemented Directive 2008/101/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council which includes aviation activities in the scheme for greenhouse gas emission allowance trading within the Community. The Legislative Decree 216/2006 was abolished with the entry into force of Legislative Decree of 13 March 2013, no. 30 (pdf, 4.931 MB), for the implementation of Directive 2009/29/EC amending Directive 2003/87/EC so as to improve and extend the greenhouse gas emission allowance trading scheme of the Community. The Legislative Decree 30/2013 entered into force on 5 April 2011.

 

 

Monitoring and reporting of emissions data

All aircraft operators administered by Italy are required to carry out monitoring of emissions released from the aircraft for aviation activities listed in the Directive (Annex I), in accordance with the monitoring plan for annual emissions, as approved by the Committee. In accordance with Article 10 of Legislative Decree 30/2013, the monitoring plan shall be sent to the Committee within 60 days from the date of entry into force, or within 60 days from the moment the aircraft operator is reported as aircraft operator administered by Italy within the updated list of aircraft operators.

 

The Phase III of the EU-ETS: Monitoring and Reporting Regulation from 1 January 2013

 

On 21 June 2012 the European Commission adopted Regulation (EU) N. 601/2012 (pdf, 1.450 MB), (“Regulation 601/2012”) on the monitoring and reporting of greenhouse gas emissions pursuant to Directive 2003/87/CE of the European Parliament and of the Council, which is valid for the third trading period of the EU system (the second for the aviation sector) from 1 January 2013. The Regulation 601/2012 replaces Decision 2009/339/EC (pdf, 815 KB), amending Decision 2007/589/EC on the inclusion of guidelines for monitoring and reporting of emissions and tonne-kilometre data for aviation activities.

 

The Committee approved on 28 December 2012 the Decision No. 45/2012 (pdf, 398 KB) containing provisions for the implementation of Regulation 601/2012.

 

From 1 January 2013 aircraft operators administered by Italy shall monitor and report their emissions under provisions of Regulation 601/2012 and Decision 45/2012 of the Committee.

 

 

 

 

 

  • Under Article 2, paragraph 1 of the Decision No. 45/2012, all aircraft operators administered by Italy, already own of an approved monitoring plan, are required to submit the updated monitoring plan for annual emissions by 31 January 2013, through the new standardized electronic template established by the Commission and in accordance with Regulation 601/2012.
  • Under Article 2, paragraph 2 of Decision No. 45/2012, and in accordance with Article 10 of Legislative Decree 30/2013, all aircraft operators administered by Italy are required to submit the monitoring plan for annual emissions, through the new standardized electronic template established by the Commission and in accordance with Regulation 601/2012, within 60 days from the date of entry into force of the Decree, or within 60 days from the moment the aircraft operator is reported as "aircraft operator administered by Italy" within the list of aircraft operators.
  • The plan, as well as the updated plan, shall be signed with a qualified electronic signature (QES), as defined by Directive 1999/93/EC of 13 December 1999, of the European Parliament and Council, concerning a Community framework for electronic signatures. The plan shall be sent to: aviation-ets@mase.gov.it.

    Information about the procedures to acquire a digital signature, based on a qualified certificate is available on the website of DigitPA - National Agency for the digitization of public administration.

    The National Committee will accept only standardized electronic template in Italian or English languages:

    < >AE Monitoring Plan (EN) (xlsx zip, 166 KB)

    AE Monitoring Plan (IT) (xls, 490 KB)

    Commission’s websitesite , and in particular to the document “Guidance document No. 2 - The Monitoring and Reporting Regulation - General guidance for aircraft operators” (pdf, 563 KB).
    On 19 June 2013 was approved the Decision no. 14/2013 (pdf, 496 KB), through which the Committee carried out the reconnaissance of the AE Monitoring Plans of aircraft operators administered by Italy pursuant to article 10, paragraph 5, of Legislative Decree no. 30/2013.

  • All aircraft operators administered by Italy are required to monitor their emissions in accordance with the approved monitoring plan and with the Regulation 601/2012. The annual emissions report (relating to the previous monitoring year) shall be submitted by March 31 of each year.

     

    The report of annual emissions shall be submitted through the standardized electronic template established by the Commission:

    < >Report of 2012 emissions (by 31 March 2013)

    Report of annual emissions for Phase III: the new template will be available on this page

    The report shall be signed with a qualified electronic signature (QES), and it shall be sent to the email: aviation-ets@mase.gov.it. The National Committee will accept only standardized electronic template in Italian or English languages.

     

  • By April 30th of each year, all aircraft operators administered by Italy are required to surrender a number of allowances equal to the total emissions in the previous year, monitored and reported in the manner as described above, through their account on the Union Register. The first surrender of allowances must be made by aircraft operators administered by Italy before 30 April 2013, in reference to 2012 emissions.

 

 

Approval of the Monitoring Plans

The National Italian Committee adopted the following Decisions on approval of the monitoring plans for the aircraft operators administered by Italy. Through these decisions, moreover, Identity Codes are now assigned to approved plans in order to open the Registry account under the Commission Regulation (EU) No. 1193/2011 (for more information about the Registry, see next paragraph and the links indicated there).

 

 

 

Allowances free of charge for 2012 and for the period 2013/2020

 

For the period from 1 January 2012 to 31 December 2012 and for the period from 1 January 2013 until 31 December 2020, the applications (doc, 38 KB) were submitted through the standardized electronic template established by the National Italian Committee, with a QES, to the email: aviation-ets@mase.gov.it .
The application included the tonne-kilometre data for aviation activities performed during the year 2010, monitored, verified and reported according to the provisions indicated in the afore mentioned Decisions.

On 30 June 2011 the Committee approved Decision 24/2011 (pdf, 346 KB) on the recognition of the submission of reports concerning tonne-kilometre data for the allocation of allowances free of charge.

In compliance with the provisions of Art. 3-quater (3) of Legislative Decree 30 December 2010, no. 257, on 30 June 2011the Committee submitted to the European Commission the total tonne-kilometre data received together with the aforementioned applications for free allowances. Aircraft operators who are eligible for the allocation of allowances free of charge, and who provided the total tonne-kilometre data submitted to the European Commission, are listed in the Annex A to Decision 24/2011. 

On 26 September 2011 the European Commission adopted Decision 2011/638/EU, on the EEA-wide benchmark values which have been used by the Committee to calculate greenhouse gas emission allowances to be allocated to aircraft operators free of charge for the period starting on 1 January 2012 until 31 December 2012 and for the period starting on 1 January 2013 until 31 December 2020.

 

On 29 December 2011, pursuant to Art. 3-sexies of Legislative Decree 216/2006, as amended by Legislative Decree 257/2010, the Committee adopted Decision 36/2011 (pdf, 49 KB) in order to determine the amount of free allowances to be allocated to aircraft operators free of charge. Annexes 1 and 2 (pdf, 69 KB) to the aforementioned Decision of the Committee contain the lists of all concerned aircraft operators stating the amount of free allowances to be allocated for each of the two periods (2012 and 2013-2020).

 

 

Registry Union

 

For information about opening an account on the registry of allowances of the Union, and about requesting free allowances, to those entitled to it, all aircraft operators assigned to Italy can refer to the ISPRA web page dedicated to EU ETS.
Please note that the identification code of the plans of aircraft operators administered by Italy (under the EU Regulation. 1193/2011) is defined through Decision 10/2012 (pdf, 58 KB) and Decision 15/2012 (pdf, 307 KB), adopted by the Commission.

 

 

Accession of Croatia to the European Union and extension of the aviation part of the ETS

 

Following the planned accession of Croatia to the EU on 1 July 2013, also the E.U. ETS will be extended to Croatia and thus the scope of the aviation part of ETS will be fully extended to Croatia by 1 January 2014.

The extension of EU ETS to Croatia will entail the consideration of additional flights within the scope of ETS that are:

 

  • domestic flights within Croatia
  • flights between Croatia and non-EEA Countries

 

For any further information and updates on the inclusion of Croatia in the EU ETS, please refer to the European Commission dedicated webpage:
http://ec.europa.eu/clima/policies/transport/aviation/croatia/index_en.htm

 

 

 

Update of the Monitoring Plan

The changes to the monitoring methodology which require an update of the monitoring plan shall be subject to the approval of the Competent Authority. 
Aircraft operators shall submit their updated monitoring plan at least 90 days before any change in the monitoring methodology or, if it resulted not technically possible or unpredictable, no later than 30 days after the change occurred.

 

The monitoring plan shall be updated in accordance with Articles 14, 15 and 16 of Regulation 601/2012.
In particular, the following changes are considered "significant," and they shall be promptly notified to the Competent Authority promptly and in no case later than the deadlines listed above.

 

Article 15(4) of Regulation 601/2012:
"Significant changes to the monitoring plans of an aircraft operator shall include:

i) a change in the relative levels of fuel consumption;
ii) a change in the value of the emission factor;
iii) a change of the calculation method (method A - method B);
iv) the introduction of new source streams, or a change in the classification of source streams;
v) changes relating to the status of the aircraft intended as a "small emitters" under Article 54 of Regulation No 601/2012 (see section below)

 

i) a change in the status of non-commercial to commercial air transport service provided;
ii) a change concerning the subject of air transport, defined as passenger, cargo or mail;
iii) a change in the method of calculation;
iv) a change of the levels relative to the mass of the passengers.
  • (a) with regard to the emission monitoring plan:
  • b) with regard to the tonne-kilometre data monitoring plan:

Changing of the fleet

In those cases where changes to the fleet list or other identification considered “not significant” by the Competent Authority, and the aforementioned changes do not affect the monitoring methodology as approved by the Competent Authority, with regard in particular to the uncertainty assessment, aircraft operators shall:

 

  • inform promptly the Competent Authority by sending an e-mail to: aviation-ets@mase.gov.it.
  • update all the information within the approved monitoring plan by 31 January of the following year with respect to that when the changes take place, in order to get a new approval by the Competent Authority.

E.g. if an aircraft operator adds a new aircraft to its fleet list on 18 May 2012, and if that variation does not affect the monitoring methodology previously approved by the Competent Authority, that aircraft operator shall promptly inform the CA about the incoming variation through an e-mail; then an updated monitoring plan is to be submitted with the inclusion of the additional aircraft.

 

Therefore it is useful to point out that the operator is asked to update the monitoring plan only once, preferably before the end of the year, unless the occurring variations are "significant". If there is any doubt about the identification of the variation "significance" and about the updating of the plan, please contact the Competent Authority by sending an e-mail to: aviation-ets@mase.gov.it.

 

 

Verification

Reports of annual emissions and tonne-kilometre data have to be verified by accredited entities (see Article 1, paragraph 13 of Directive 2008/101/CE). 

The National Italian Committee adopted Decision 024/2010 (pdf, 121 KB) relating to requirements for the accreditationand verification activity as a EU ETS verification body (including aviation sector).

Decision 05/2011 (pdf, 78 KB) was published on 4 February 2011, it deals with the recognition for verifiers, including the list of accredited verifiers for the aviation sector.
The European Commission published the document “EU ETS Verification Guidance for Aviation”(pdf, 465 KB) . This guidance is designed to clarify the EU ETS requirements on verification and to give practical advice to verifiers, operators, competent authorities and accreditation bodies on how to interpret these requirements in a consistent manner.

 

On June 21st, 2012 the European Commission adopted Regulation (EU) No 600/2012 (pdf, 933 KB) (the "Regulation 600/2012") on the verification of greenhouse gas emissions and tonne-kilometers and the accreditation of verifiers under Directive 2003/87/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council, valid from January 1st, 2013.

 

Further information and all relevant documentation about accreditation of foreign and Italian verifiers, including forms, are available on this website at the dedicated webpage: Verificatori ETS.

 

 

 

“De minimis” exemption

The "de minimis” exemption under subparagraph (j) of Annex I to ETS Directive 2003/87/EC is applicable where an operator:

 

  • I. is a commercial air transport operator. This means that he holds an air operator's certificate (AOC) under Part I of Annex 6 to the Chicago Convention, and
  • II. has performed less than 243 flights per period for three consecutive four-month periods or less than 10.000 tonnes emissions per year.

If both conditions (I) and (II) are met but the operator is included in the list, it is possible that traffic data used for the estimation of emissions are partially  missing or not up to date.

All aircraft operators included in the list of aircraft operators and administered by Italy, are required to monitor their emissions starting from the year when they have been included in the aforementioned list and to submit their Annual emissions report, duly verified by an accredited verifier.
Aircraft operators that, with reference to an (x) monitoring year, can prove that they meet the conditions set at bullets I. and II. above, through submission of their updated AOC and the verified Annual emissions report, stating that they do not trespass the aforementioned thresholds concerning annual emissions or number of flights, will be considered exempted under the “de minimis” rule set out in Annex 1, letter “j”, to the ETS Directive. Therefore they need not comply with ETS obligations related to aviation activity performed in the following year (x + 1). However, such aircraft operators shall constantly check that the aforementioned conditions are met and, in case they cannot be confirmed with reference to aviation activity performed in year (y), they shall:

 

  • Inform promptly the Competent Authority;
  • Start again monitoring emissions according to their already approved monitoring plan, provided that the same operational methodology is maintained, or submit a new annual emissions monitoring plan for the approval by Competent Authority;
  • Submit a verified Annual emissions report by 31st March of the following year (y + 1) with respect to the year when the conditions for the exemption from ETS ceased to be applicable, and surrender by 30 April a number of allowances equal to the emissions during the preceding calendar year.

Inclusion after 2010

Operators falling again within the scope (with regard to at least one of the conditions I and II) and operators who become for the first time aircraft operators after 2010 may apply for free allowances from the "special reserve" pursuant to article 8 of Legislative Decree 30/2013. We underline that any application must be submitted to the National Italian Committee by 30 June 2015 together with a verified tonne-kilometre data report referred to aviation activities performed during the year 2014.

 

 

 

Small emitters

According to Art. 54 of Regulation No. 601/2012, an air craft operator whose flights in aggregate emit less than 25 000 tonnes of CO2 per year, or which operates less than 243 flights during three consecutive four-month periods, is considered a “small emitter”. A small emitter can use a simplified procedure to monitor its emissions. 

On 9 July 2010 the Commission adopted a Regulation on the approval of a simplified tool developed by Eurocontrol to estimate the fuel consumption for operators who are “small emitters”. The tool is available on Eurocontrol's website(registration to the extranet is needed).

 

 

 

Further support and useful documents for the operators

For any request or information please contact the Technical Secretariat of the National Committee at: aviation-ets@mase.gov.it.

Some guidance documents have been prepared by the Task Forces that have been set under the EU ETS Compliance Forum, and a guidance to help aircraft operators to compile their monitoring plans has been prepared by the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. All the documents are available on the European Commission's web site .

 

 

  Latest update: 26 June 2013


Ultimo aggiornamento 30.08.2021