December 2010 Archives

The UNFCCC's COP16 climate change negotiations in Cancun have concluded with barely a mention of the airline industry.

COP16 was successful in agreeing to design a 'Green Climate Fund', aimed at raising financing to help developing countries deal with the effects of climate change.

However, a proposal to raise $3 billion a year for the fund though the introduction of a new tax on aviation was not adopted.

For more details, here's an article I penned this morning.

COP17 will take place in Durban, South Africa in late 2011.  

You could be forgiven for not noticing, or forgetting, that climate change talks are currently going on at the UNFCCC's COP16 meeting in Cancun, Mexico.

The talks are aimed at reaching a global agreement for curbing greenhouse gas emissions when the Kyoto protocol expires in 2012. 

The Cancun negotiations have received much less press attention than the talks that took place a year ago in Copenhagen, and expectations have been kept (deliberately??) low on any potential outcomes.

During the two-week event, which ends on 10 December, the airline industry will be promoting the recent ICAO framework to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from aviation, which my colleague Lori Ranson summed up nicely here.

At the Aerospace and Defence Industries Association of Europe's recent Aeroweek conference in Brussels, MEP Holger Krahmer summed up the level of pessimism surrounding the Cancun talks by saying: "No one really believes Cancun will lead to a binding emissions reduction agreement."

It'll be interesting to see if this pessimism turns out to be realism later this week.  

Last week I braved the snow and headed to Brussels to attend an aviation and the environment roundtable at the European Parliament, part of the Aerospace and Defence Industries Association of Europe's Aeroweek conference.

The most interesting and engaging comments to emerge from the roundtable came from World Wildlife Fund director for global energy policy Stephan Singer, who used his presentation slot to call for more investment in researching and developing the use of hydrogen as an alternative fuel for aviation. Here's the full story.

The note of optimism in Singer's speech over the use of hydrogen was somewhat dampened by Safran chief Jean-Paul Herteman, who made the following point: "If you look at the Airbus A380, we know how to make the engines and store hydrogen but there would be no available room left for passengers."

However, Singer's main point was that amazing things can happen when they are given emphasis and funding. "People have a tendency to underestimate the technological breakthroughs that can happen in a few years", was his retort to Herteman.