OREANDA-NEWS On 06 October was announced, that BELAVIA is ready to be participant of European Environmental Programme.

In 2008 the European Parliament voted for including the airline activity in the European Emission Trading Scheme (EU ETS). The reason for this was the heightened emissions of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the percentage of which in the total volume of greenhouse emissions is amounted to 3% in the European Union. According to the EU estimates, nearly 13% of the total volume of the carbon dioxide emissions in the whole world relates to the air transport. The airlines will have to be responsible for its activities before the environment and to combine it with the strategic and finance consequences of the future emissions trade system. The airlines were set the task to decrease the level of carbon dioxide emissions by 20% by 2020 in comparison with 1990. The system is applied to all airlines operating the flights to the EU, from the EU or within the EU. For each airline the supervising country was determined, the authorities of which are provided with all information concerning the CO2 emissions. Italy was chosen as a country that regulates Belavia’s emissions level and government bodies of which will monitor the emissions of Belarus flag carrier in future.

The obligatory emissions monitoring of all airlines will start on January 1, 2010, however the system will function officially only in 2012. The airlines which not create the necessary structures, run the risk not to get the conformation of its annual reports or the ton- kilometers reports, that can be resulted in renunciation of free-of-charge certificates issue for the airlines, but also they will be obliged to pay additional fee for each ton of the carbon dioxide discharging into the air.