Emirates senior vice-president of public, industry, international and environmental affairs at Emirates, Andrew Parker, has warned that the European Union carbon emission permit scheme will cost the airline up to $1 billion (Dh3.67 billion) during the first eight to ten years of the ETS.
"I think we’ll lose somewhere in the $500 million to $1 billion range over the first eight years or first decade of the scheme," said Parker. "Europe is very large in terms of our global network. This will have a very significant financial impact on Emirates. We’ll have to pay tens of millions of dollars in the first few years, which will increase to hundreds of billions of dollars.”
Some 24% of Emirates’ global operations are in Europe.
"We were one of the first airlines to sign off with the legal requirements because we had no other choice. But we did so in protest," said Parker. "Many airlines and many countries around the world had a strong disagreement with the European commission with the unilateral nature of this emission trading scheme.
"In other words, we did not feel it represented the best global approach to try and reduce aviation’s impact. We have a problem when one country or one group of countries decides that it will have a regional or local tax scheme."
Emirates is working to improve fuel efficiency, shown in the airline’s first Environmental Report. The report, which covers the period between April 1, 2010 and March 31, this year, shows Emirates’ fuel efficiency was 4.12 litres per 100 passenger-kilometres (PK), 25% better than the IATA industry average.