British Airways chief executive Willie Walsh was scheduled to tell world leaders at the UN climate summit yesterday that the aviation industry could halve its carbon dioxide emissions by 2050, a spokesman for the airline said on Monday.
The International Air Transport Association (IATA) agreed to the ambitious target to cut sector emissions to 50 percent below 2005 levels by 2050 at its annual general meeting in June.
Britain’s Committee on Climate Change said this month flights could produce up to a fifth of all global carbon dioxide emissions by 2050, from about 2 percent now, without urgent and drastic action.
PHOTO: EPA
IATA says a global carbon emissions permit trading system should be introduced to encourage cuts, rather than slapping more taxes on air travel.
“Carbon trading gives airlines a direct incentive to reduce their emissions. Flight taxes, such as Air Passenger Duty, do not,” British Airways said in a statement. “Taxation guarantees no emissions reductions whatever, and does not necessarily provide any revenue for environmental objectives.”
World leaders were to meet at the UN in New York yesterday for a one-day summit to try to unlock 190-nation negotiations on a new deal to combat global warming due to be hammered out in Copenhagen in December.
IATA also agreed in June to cap carbon emissions from aviation from 2020, and aim for an average improvement in fuel efficiency of 1.5 percent per year from this year to 2020.
Meanwhile, General Electric Co and BP Plc are demanding governments enact regulations to cut emissions blamed for global warming and create a worldwide carbon market to ensure developing nations slow pollution growth.
GE, the biggest maker of power-plant equipment, and BP, Europe’s second-largest oil company, joined other multinational manufacturers and service providers demanding leaders agree to cut emissions 85 percent by 2050. They also want rules to keep developing countries from logging tropical forests and money to help the poor adapt to a warming planet.
Without a global pact, industry will suffer from “uncertainty,” the firms said in a statement that was also signed by Coca-Cola, Starbucks, BASF and Rio Tinto.
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BREAKTHROUGH: The US is making chips on par in yield and quality with Taiwan, despite people saying that it could not happen, the official said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has begun producing advanced 4-nanometer (nm) chips for US customers in Arizona, US Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo said, a milestone in the semiconductor efforts of the administration of US President Joe Biden. In November last year, the commerce department finalized a US$6.6 billion grant to TSMC’s US unit for semiconductor production in Phoenix, Arizona. “For the first time ever in our country’s history, we are making leading edge 4-nanometer chips on American soil, American workers — on par in yield and quality with Taiwan,” Raimondo said, adding that production had begun in recent
Seven hundred and sixty-four foreigners were arrested last year for acting as money mules for criminals, with many entering Taiwan on a tourist visa for all-expenses-paid trips, the Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB) said on Saturday. Although from Jan. 1 to Dec. 26 last year, 26,478 people were arrested for working as money mules, the bureau said it was particularly concerned about those entering the country as tourists or migrant workers who help criminals and scammers pick up or transfer illegally obtained money. In a report, officials divided the money mules into two groups, the first of which are foreigners, mainly from Malaysia
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