Six airlines face UK fines under EU ETS

Six airlines face fines from the UK government totalling at least €113,000 for failing to comply with the EU ETS in 2012, the country's Environment Agency (EA) told Carbon Pulse, adding that it may impose more penalties on other delinquent carriers.

Five operators have already been served with penalty notices, while the agency will likely hand a sixth to India's Jet Airways, it said, after the airline's appeal over non-compliance charges was dismissed in March.

The five operators include Indian flagship carrier Air India, as well as Moscow-based charter service Loid Global Ltd, Nigeria-based Oranto Petroleum, Connecticut-headquartered Media Consulting Services LLC, and Primevalue Trading Ltd of the British Virgin Islands.

The six notices served were for a total 1,276 tonnes of CO2 that was not covered by emissions units.

Companies operating flights between airports in the European Economic Area (EEA) in 2012 were due to report their emissions and hand in a corresponding number of carbon units covering their CO2 output by the end of Apr. 2013.

The EA said 1,203 aircraft operators were allocated to the UK in 2012, but only 395 emissions reports were submitted for England-registered carriers.

ETS airline fines EU Carbon

The fines add to the number being levied on non-European airlines that have refused to comply with the EU ETS for various reasons.

Many argue that their governments have prohibited them from participating in the scheme, but an adjudicator appointed by the UK government rejected such a claim by Jet Airways because he deemed the Indian government's directions to be non-binding.

Germany in April published a list of 44 non-compliant operators that face total fines of €5.4 million.

Russian flagship carrier Aeroflot, which was last year handed a €215,000 fine by the German government, was absent from the list.

News portal Green Air Online said France is understood to have started fining its non-compliant airlines, while Flemish authorities are believed to have hit Saudi Arabian Airlines, or Saudia, with an €800,000 penalty.

The EU scaled back its airline carbon market following its so-called "stop the clock" initiative in 2012 amid claims by non-EEA countries including India, Russia, China and the US that the scheme infringed on their sovereignty.

The EU also delayed the compliance deadline for 2013 and 2014 emissions from carriers flying between EEA airports until Apr. 30, 2015.

According to EU data published on Monday, more than 500 operators met last week's compliance deadline, handing in 107.8 million units against emissions of 107.7 million tonnes of CO2.

Twenty carriers failed to comply including Bulgaria Air, France's Air Mediterranee, Italy's Blue Panorama Airlines, and Greece's Hermes Airlines, while a further 19 did not report their emissions and more than 750 were listed as exempt.

SWISS DISS

Separately, Lufthansa-owned Swiss Air, which has launched its own legal challenge to the EU aviation scheme, was last month given the go-ahead by a UK appeals court take its case to Europe's highest court.

Swiss Air sued the UK - where it is registered - over damages from being "peculiarly badly affected" by its perceived unequal treatment under the EU ETS.

It is seeking to recover the roughly 620,000 allowances it was forced to buy for compliance, or their equivalent monetary value, as well as compensation for being discriminated against under the EU principle of equal treatment.

All parties agreed that the case should be heard by the European Court of Justice. A hearing date has yet to be set.

Switzerland was the only non-EEA member not exempted by the EU from its aviation ETS, despite uproar from the Swiss government.

Swiss Air's case was initially rejected by a UK high court after it ruled that the EU is not obligated to extend equal treatment to all countries under the bloc's foreign policy.

The ECJ in 2011 found that the aviation ETS was legal under international law and that the EU could apply the law to any countries using its airspace or airports.