مقاله سال ۲۰۱۶

Along with safety and security, environmental protection is in the centre of the aviation industry aims. Recent statistics indicate that, if no mitigation action is taken, carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions will continue to rise given the increasing trend of air traffic. Technological and operational efficiency improvements and the use of alternative fuels are widely believed to be promising long-term approaches to meet aviation’s climate goals. Market-based instruments complement these measures and provide a costeffective option to reduce emissions in the short term (Lee et al., 2013).

Market-based measures (MBM) put a price on aircraft emissions, with most existing instruments focusing on CO2 emissions. Existing market-based measures include voluntary carbon offsetting, environmental charges at the airports and cap-and-trade policies. The largest cap-and-trade aviation policy is the European Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS), introduced in 2012 (European Union, 2008). Trade disputes at international level and opposition from many non-EU countries led to the amendment of the European regulation in 2014; EU ETS covers flights only within the European Economic Area until 2016 (European Union, 2014). This situation added a pressure on International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) to agree on a global market-based measure for aviation as part of a broader package of measures including new technology, more efficient operations and better use of infrastructure (ICAO, 2013).

A number of studies examined the impact of EU ETS on airlines network reconfiguration (Derigs and Illing, 2013; Hsu and Lin, 2005), tourism (Blanc and Winchester, 2012; Peeters and Dubois, 2010; Pentelow and Scott, 2011; Tol, 2007), airline operational characteristics (Brueckner and Zhang, 2010) and airline competition (Barbot et al., 2014). Other studies investigated the impact on ticket prices and demand change. Albers et al. (2009) examined the effect of EU ETS on airfares and passenger demand at individual route level. Assuming a carbon price of V20/tn, they found that additional costs may range from V1.5 to V26.8 per passenger. Under two scenarios of cost pass-through rate (35% and 100%) and using existing values of price elasticity, their results showed moderate price increase which could not initiate major route configuration. EU ETS has also been studied by Scheelhaase and Grimme (2007) and Scheelhaase et al. (2010) in terms of its economic impact on EU and non-EU airlines. The results indicated that EU airlines’ environmental costs are higher, due to a wider coverage of * Corresponding author. operations within the EU region, losing a significant competitiveadvantage as compared to the non-EU airlines. Anger (2010) used a dynamic simulation model to investigate the impact of EU ETS on macroeconomic activity and CO2 emissions. Under three allowance price scenarios and 100% cost pass-through rate, the author concluded that EU-ETS results in an increase of annual CO2 emissions at low allowance prices but a fall of 0.30% at an allowance price of V40 in 2020 compared with no action scenarios. Lu (2009) examined the impact of environmental charges on air passenger demand using six intra-European short-haul routes in two city pairs. The potential demand reduction is higher for the low-cost carrier Easyjet compared to that of full service carriers, because of lower fares. Miyoshi (2014) investigated the changes in passenger demand and consumer welfare after the implementation of EU ETS on Annex I and non-Annex I airlines. The author constructed a logit model to estimate the impact of travel costs increase on market shares of a specific route. The results demonstrated that the EU ETS could be an effective instrument except for very low carbon prices. Malina et al. (2012) estimated the economic impact of EU ETS on US airlines. They used price elasticity values derived in other studies and assumed that fuel efficiency, fuel price and carbon price are annually increased. The authors found that under full cost passthrough, the CO2 emissions from US airlines may increase by 32% between 2011 and 2020 in comparison to 35% for the reference scenario. Hofer et al. (2010) examined the effects of an air travel carbon emissions tax on travel-related carbon emissions in the US and concluded that the emissions tax increases ticket prices under an own-price elasticity value of
۱٫۱۵٫ They also considered the airautomobile substitution effect, since some air travelers may divert to automobiles, assuming a cross-elasticity of 0.041. They showed that emission taxes may cause significant air-to-automobile diversion effects.