Op-Ed: Cap-And-Trade Policy Could Hamper The Reduction Of Airline Carbon Emissions

The nation's airlines have made enormous strides in recent years to increase fuel efficiency and reduce carbon emissions, driven by the volatile nature of energy prices as well as environmental concerns.

Those efforts have resulted in a 110 percent improvement in fuel efficiency among U.S. airlines between 1978 and 2007—dramatic progress for a global industry that today produces just 2 percent of total worldwide man-made carbon emissions.

At Delta Air Lines, we've been working to reduce pollution and be an environmentally responsible airline. We have decreased our carbon emissions and fuel burn by more than 30 percent since 2000 through fleet renewal, more efficient operating and maintenance procedures, upgraded facilities, replacement of older ground equipment, reduced water usage and expanded recycling efforts. In addition, 277,000 trees have been planted by the Conservation Fund and Nature Conservancy since 2007 thanks to the contributions of Delta, our employees and customers.

And we're already hard at work to meet the industrywide goal set by the Air Transport Association to be 30 percent more fuel-efficient by 2025. That ambitious target can be met, in part, by the realization of the much-needed Next Generation air traffic modernization, which would result in a 12 percent to 15 percent improvement in aircraft fuel efficiency for the entire U.S. aviation industry. More progress will come from investments in new engines, airframes, avionics and alternative fuels, while increasing regulation of oil speculators.

However, our efforts to "fly green" could be jeopardized by pending legislation that, ironically, is intended to help the environment. Delta has serious concerns about the potential impact on the airline industry of the American Clean Energy and Security Act, which was recently narrowly approved by the U.S. House of Representatives. The U.S. Senate is expected to take up a separate measure this fall.

The ACES act is a "cap-and-trade" scheme that would limit overall carbon emissions and require fuel and energy companies to buy and sell the right to pollute. This legislation could have a significant negative impact on already-strained U.S. airlines, resulting in hundreds of millions of dollars in additional fuel costs that will either have to be absorbed or passed on to customers.

Those additional costs will undermine the ultimate aim of the act—to decrease carbon emissions—by making it difficult, if not impossible, for U.S. airlines to invest in the technology and alternative fuels that can reduce harmful greenhouse gases.

ACES also would threaten our ability to provide jobs to thousands of U.S. workers, and airline service to hundreds of communities. It would put U.S. carriers in a competitive disadvantage against foreign airlines immune to the measure's effects.

Any U.S. climate change legislation should recognize aviation's global nature and its importance to the U.S. and global economies. Aviation's contribution to worldwide carbon emissions reductions should be governed by the International Civil Aviation Organization, a sister body under the United Nations to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, which has been charged with governing aviation for nearly 75 years. ICAO is already hard at work developing a global aviation framework in time for December climate change treaty talks in Copenhagen.

We urge anyone who has a stake in aviation, transportation or travel to contact his or her senators and ask them to vote no on a climate change bill unless it is modified to exempt U.S. aviation fuels from the cap-and-trade scheme in favor of a more effective plan that allows aviation's contributions to be governed by the International Civil Aviation Organization. This would allow us to address the issue of global climate change without crippling one of our nation's key industries and a global economic engine.

Delta Air Lines looks forward to working with Congress and the Obama administration on a plan that has a real chance to reduce our emissions while maintaining a healthy, strong airline industry, rather than further increasing our costs, weakening our industry and further jeopardizing jobs and service.