27 June 2018: The Council of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) has adopted a set of Standards and Recommended Practices (SARPs) that provide mandatory actions by States and airline operators to implement ICAO’s Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation (CORSIA).

The measures are part of the First Edition of Annex 16, Volume IV to the Convention on International Civil Aviation (Chicago Convention) that was adopted as one of the core components of CORSIA. The document lays out standards and mandatory actions in the following areas: administration; monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV); CO2 offsetting requirements and emissions reductions from sustainable aviation fuels; and emission units. It provides an agreed basis for emissions baselines and for measuring and reporting emissions reductions.

The standards are one of three core components for implementing CORSIA next to an Environmental and Technical Volume that will provide guidelines on MRV and on calculating offsetting requirements. The third component is a series of implementation elements to be finalized by 2021, including state pairs for route-based emissions coverage, a CO2 emissions estimation and reporting tool (CERT), sustainable aviation fuels, eligible emission units, and a central registry of annually updated emissions data. The Council also approved CERT, which provides a simple mechanism for small operators to monitor and report CO2 emissions, and reached agreement on the details of a central registry.

CORSIA was adopted by the ICAO Council in 2016 as overarching scheme to achieve ICAO’s aspirational climate goals of increasing fuel efficiency by 2% per year and carbon-neutral growth of civil aviation from 2020 onwards. [ICAO Press Release] [CORSIA Homepage]