The European Union will press ahead with plans to include aviation in its emissions trading system despite United States' efforts through a UN body to discourage it, the European Commission (EC) said today.
Airline emissions are at the top of the agenda of a tri-annual meeting of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) in Montreal, which began earlier this week.
The United States, which opposes EU plans to include foreign airlines in its emissions trading scheme, is pushing ICAO to let individual nations decide the best way to manage greenhouse gas emissions from their airlines, a US working paper says.
But the European Commission, which authored the legislation that would include flights coming into and out of the 27-nation bloc from 2012, said it will go forward with its proposal, which it says is in line with international law.
"The mutual consent approach for us is not an option," said a spokeswoman for Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas.
The Association of European Airlines, which represents big carriers such as British Airways and Lufthansa, supports the EU scheme but would prefer a global one, a spokeswoman said.
Global airlines group IATA, which stresses that airlines account for only 2 per cent of world carbon dioxide emissions, has called for a voluntary, global scheme.