Sustainability of the aviation sector. Climate Change Mitigation Measures and Local Air Quality Preservation

Action plans

Introduction

State Action Plans are strategic documents through which States can establish medium- to long-term plans to address CO2 emissions_from international aviation.
In particular, these documents reflect the implementation of all the measures considered by ICAO, in cooperation with stakeholders:

technology Package
air Traffic Management Package
sustainable Fuels Package
carbon offsetting package

These Action Plans are regularly updated documents every 3 years, and allow for effective and concrete monitoring of the implementation of the different packages of measures.

Reference regulations

Although the Action Plans do not have a regulatory basis at the national or international level, they are being developed in accordance with ICAO recommendations.
Since the 38th ICAO Assembly in 2013, a number of key decisions have been taken in this area for the implementation of a strategic plan in the international aviation environment that could assist Member States in assessing their objectives and action measures.
The set of measures to be taken into account for the development of the Action Plans is updated three-yearly and is described in ICAO Document 9988, “Guidance Manual for the Development of States Action Plans on Reduction of CO2 Emissions_”, which was first published in 2013 and updated in 2016.
The 2019 version of Document 9988 is currently in force, which is intended to support the development of future action plans, which are recommended to be published in 2021.

Methodology

For the development of the Action Plan, it is first necessary to know the total emissions of the Member State in international aviation in previous years, thus establishing the base values on which the rest of the estimates will be made.
There are several methodologies to account for CO₂ emissions attributed to international flights:
ICAO: each State reports CO₂ emissions from international flights operated by State-registered aircraft (Registration State);
IPCC: each State reports CO₂ emissions from international flights departing from all aerodromes located in the State or its territories (home State).
States with a registered operator are encouraged to follow the ICAO methodology for accounting for CO₂ emissions from international aviation for the purposes of its State Action Plan. However, States that already use the IPCC methodology, or States without a registered airline, should also be able to develop and voluntarily submit an ICAO Action Plan, where they could establish their national strategy for dealing with_CO2 in international aviation.
Once the point of origin and the estimation of aviation growth based on the parameters set for the Member State have been known, consideration will have to be given to the improvement intervals that the different packages of measures have in
relation to the presentation of the Action Plans, ICAO has developed an interactive website that can be used to upload and send documents electronically, this web platform is named APER.