At a European Union Emissions Trading Scheme (EU-ETS) session yesterday afternoon at the Canadian Business Aviation Association annual meeting, which started yesterday and concludes today in Toronto, EBAA CEO Fabio Gamba said he shares the audience’s frustration with the scheme’s many flaws. He readily acknowledged that the EU-ETS discriminates against business aviation and fails to encourage operators to reduce their carbon footprint.

Although business aviation emits less than 2 percent of air transport emissions, and less than .04 percent of total man-made emissions, “We confirm our sector’s role in helping to combat global warming,” Gamba said. This includes a commitment to carbon-neutral growth by 2020, improvement in fuel efficiency of an average 2 percent a year until 2020 and halving (from 2005 levels) business aviation CO2 emissions. “However,” he added, “we believe the time has now come to define what these measures should be.”

Meanwhile, IBAC director general Don Spruston cautioned that resistance to EU-ETS could lead to retaliation that would harm all parties. Since the EC will abandon its scheme when a global agreement on aviation emissions is reached, he called upon the international business aviation community to rally behind a worldwide aviation effort to develop a global, market-based alternative to EU-ETS.