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Curbing flight emissions is essential to meeting the Paris pact, but planes are completely absent from the text, face no legal fuel efficiency requirements or limits on CO2 emissions. But all that is about to change

In the coming weeks, the Paris climate agreement could be about to enter into force. Action to meet the deal’s targets of holding global warming to 2C is most clearly visible in the energy sector - where a low-carbon transition is underway. There is, however, one sector where, until now, action has been invisible owing to its exemption from contributing to the fight to limit carbon pollution: international aviation.

Aviation is one of the top-10 global carbon polluters. The industry emits more CO2 each year than the 129 countries with the lowest annual emissions. Worryingly, those emissions are expected to balloon by 300% if no concerted action is taken sooner rather than later. In 2010, 2.4 billion passengers travelled by plane, but by 2050 that number is expected to rise to 16 billion.
The global agreement reached in Paris last December committed the world’s governments to fighting climate change. Curbing aviation emissions is absolutely essential to fulfilling those commitments. However, aviation was conspicuous by its absence from the text.

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What can the world do to stop North Koreas nuclear development – is a new approach called for – and if so, what is it?

From Bogota to Paris to Istanbul, cities around the world have been imposing traffic restrictions to mark World Car-Free Day. Is it a vision of the future?

• Can driverless cars reshape our suburbs?

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Is the world finally winning the long war with rats?

Prices were mostly unchanged except in Victoria where futures prices jumped 5% amid talk of first big coal closure.

Despite strong government support, fracking company Cuadrilla says progress on the ground remains slow, as it awaits a decision on two key sites in Lancashire

No shale gas wells will be drilled in Britain this year, the industry has confirmed, as a key fracking decision nears.

Within the next fortnight, the government will decide whether to accept shale company Cuadrilla’s appeal against Lancashire county council’s decision last year to turn down its application for two fracking sites.

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Australia stood by while Britain’s military elite trashed tracts of its landscape then left. Menzies had said yes without even consulting his cabinet

It is 27 September 1956. At a dusty site called One Tree, in the northern reaches of the 3,200 sq km Maralinga atomic weapons test range in outback South Australia, the winds have finally died down and the countdown begins.

The site has been on alert for more than two weeks but the weather has constantly interfered with the plans. Finally, Prof Sir William Penney, head of the UK Atomic Weapons Research Establishment, can wait no longer. He gives the final, definitive go-ahead.

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Having obliterated almost all the effective federal climate and renewables policies, the focus is now switching to state-based targets, using the old arguments of higher costs and little abatement.

Woodwalton Fen, Cambridgeshire Bladderworts and bog myrtle, dragonflies, water fleas and hornets all thrive in the vicinity of a bungalow built for natural historians

A remnant rectangle of wetland, two square kilometres of wildlife that before humans drained the fens was part of a 2,000 square km wet, peaty wilderness. Many species have disappeared, but an exuberance of intertwined life still thrives on this little patch.

Related: In the service of the queen, hornets hunt day and night

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The first installation of the revolutionary GCL solar storage battery has taken place in Brisbane this week at Instyle Solar of Brendale.

Monday's successful launch of eight satellites into space proves India's commercial space programme is booming, writes Yogita Limaye.

Hazelwood closure could come as early as April 2017. Engineers your time starts now.

Solar Analytics, Wattwatchers lend technology and expertise to international effort to install smart solar on world leaders' rooftops.

A closer look at Hazelwood Power Station as murmurs of its potential closure grow louder.

Grattan Institute’s latest report suggest rapid expansion of renewable capacity means higher electricity prices. But is that true?

Australia's public desire for climate action is strongest it has been since 2008. The question, now, is how will our politicians respond?

South Australia’s electricity shock exposed an emerging conflict between Australia’s climate policies and the demands of our energy market.

Aviation emissions are growing about 5% each year. Flying image from www.shutterstock.com

Tomorrow, delegates from more than 190 nations will begin an 11-day meeting in Montreal to determine the final form of a scheme to reduce greenhouse emissions from the aviation industry.

The meeting – the latest in a series of three-yearly summits held by the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), the United Nations agency tasked with reducing aviation emissions – is poised to decide on a scheme that would ultimately make it mandatory for most airlines from member countries to buy carbon offsets for their flights.

The resolution would fill a key gap in global climate policy. The Paris climate agreement, brokered last December, makes no mention of aviation emissions, despite having featured these in earlier drafts.

Earlier this month, the ICAO Council issued the final draft of a resolution text to be considered – and, presumably, after some debate, approved – at the Montreal meeting.

In its current form, questions will be raised over the scheme’s effectiveness, not least because it won’t become mandatory until 2027 – and even then not for all carriers. But these loopholes make it more likely that the plan will be adopted.

Mandatory offsetting (in the future)

The planned carbon offsetting scheme set out in the draft resolution would begin with a pilot phase running from 2021 to 2023, involving states that have volunteered to participate. These states will have some flexibility in determining the basis of their aircraft operators' offsets.

The purpose of this pilot phase is not really clear, and some aviation industry organisations, such as the Air Transport Action Group, regard it as unnecessary.

A first “formal” phase from 2024 to 2026 would apply to states that voluntarily participate in the pilot phase, and again would offset with reference to options in the resolution text. The main difference between the pilot and first phases is that, for the pilot phase, states can determine the applicable baseline emissions year.

A second, mandatory phase would only operate from 2027 to 2035 and would exempt the least developed countries and those with the smallest proportion of international air travel.

There are also exemptions based on the routes themselves. While the rules would apply to all flights between countries covered by the offsetting requirements, they will not apply to flights that take off or land in a non-member state.

Offsetting the issue

Then there are the well-publicised problems with the whole concept of carbon offsetting. Most countries and groups of countries (and ICAO is a group of countries) have ignored offsets in favour of mechanisms such as emissions trading schemes or carbon taxation – and with good reason.

Offsets, which by definition simply move emissions from one source to another, have little net effect on emissions. As such, offsets could be viewed as a diversion from regulations that genuinely encourage emissions reduction, such as carbon pricing. The Paris Agreement does not directly rely on offsets because all governments recognise that it’s collective, substantive action that counts.

What is really needed is a policy that motivates major industrial sectors – aviation included – to cut emissions and use resources more efficiently. Market-based mechanisms offer the best way to apply the price pressure needed to drive such a change.

The question in designing any market-based mechanism is whether to base it on quantity or price. A quantity-based instrument is an ETS, the most common example of which is a cap-and-trade system; a price-based instrument is a carbon tax.

ICAO has chosen neither of these options. Instead, it has chosen a system of voluntary and then mandatory carbon offsets, with all their attendant problems.

Other issues

An analysis by Carbon Brief has found that even if the aviation industry meets all of its emissions targets, by 2050 it will still have consumed 12% of the global carbon budget for keeping warming to 1.5℃. This could increase to as much as 27% if the industry misses its targets.

Meanwhile, airlines estimate that air travel will grow by an average of almost 5% each year until 2034, in an industry where low-carbon alternatives are difficult to find.

It is perhaps good news, then, that three weeks ago 49 states indicated they were willing to opt into the ICAO’s offsetting scheme in its earliest phase. The following week, in a joint statement, the European Union, Mexico and the Marshall Islands said they would join the scheme. And at G20 talks earlier this month, China and the US offered support.

Brazil, one of the fastest-growing aviation markets, said, however, that it will not join until the mandatory scheme begins in 2027.

Notwithstanding substantive draft texts prepared before the assembly, there is still plenty of negotiating to do before we know its final shape. And despite the pitfalls of carbon offsetting and some difficulty with integrating the scheme with the Paris process, a resolution at the meeting would be a step forward (to be followed by further steps and leaps) for an industry with emissions roughly equal to those of the entire nation of South Korea.

The authors will be attending the 39th ICAO Assembly in Montreal.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.

African elephant population has contracted by around 111,000 in the past decade as a result of poaching, study finds

The number of African elephants dropped by about 111,000 in the past decade as a result of poaching, a report released at the Johannesburg conference on the wildlife trade has found.

News of the worst drop in elephant numbers in 25 years came amid disagreement on the second day of the global meeting over the best way to improve the plight of the animals, which are targeted for their tusks.

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We go in search of the superb lyrebirds that live in Victoria's Dandenong Ranges; a commercial fisherman makes dog treats from unwanted fish; and ex race horses find new homes in western Queensland.