The European Union climate chief heads to the United States next week to defend the bloc's carbon charge on flights to the EU, while governments, airlines and planemakers warn it could lead to chaos in the skies and a trade war. The law, which officially took effect on January 1, has a long lead time, so none of the airlines faces a bill until next year after their emissions have been calculated.
Before then, a series of smaller deadlines will elapse for submitting data under the EU's complicated Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) to cap climate-warming greenhouse gases from power generators, heavy industry and now airlines. India said this week it would ignore the next one on March 31, following on from noisy protests from China, which has linked suspension of $14 billion of jet orders from European planemaker Airbus to its fury with the EU.
Airbus's arch-rival, US-based plane-maker Boeing, has for once found common cause with Airbus in its dislike of the EU scheme. In a meeting last month in Moscow of the so-called "coalition of the unwilling", countries opposed to the EU law agreed on retaliatory steps, though they did not agree on enforcing them.
EU Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard has said time and again the only reason for the EU to alter course would be if the United Nations' International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) could come up with a global plan to tackle rising carbon emissions from the sector. "It's not that you can threaten us to change the law," she told Reuters last month. "It's one thing that they do not like what Europe is doing. What can they agree to in ICAO?"
Next week Hedegaard will be in Washington to discuss transatlantic climate issues with US administration officials and Members of Congress and to receive a Women and the Green Economy Leadership Award. On this issue, the United States has been less appreciative of her leadership. It has sent her letters of complaint about the ETS and threatened, but stopped short of agreeing, blocking legislation in Congress.
So far, US airlines are complying grudgingly. The penalties for breach of the EU law start at 100 euros ($130) for every tonne of carbon airlines fail to pay for, while the cost of compliance is estimated at about 2 euros per passenger for a flight from Shanghai to Frankfurt. Persistent offenders could find their flights banned. That might trigger international air chaos if other countries retaliate, as they say they might.