And the biggest CO2 emitting airline in Europe is..................Ryanair!

European Union Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) installations emitted 164 million tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) less than their number of freely received carbon allowances in 2012 , based on calculations issued in a summary by Carbon Market Data.

For the first time in 2012, airlines began reporting their verified emissions on intra-European flights. Carbon Market Data published a list of the 15 biggest CO2 emitting airlines in Europe, with the biggest being Ryanair with 7,456,718 verified emissions in 2012. The Irish airline had 5,560,944 free allowances.

Lufthansa is second with 4,932,287 verified emissions, with 12,563,128 free allowances in 2012, giving it a surplus of 7,630,841 units. Nine of the 15 airlines reported surplus allowances.

See here for the full table. The overall figures, derived from the verified emissions data submitted by 95% of the 11,300 installations currently included in the trading system (such as powerplants and factories), show that EU ETS installations emitted, in total, 8% less CO2 than the number of allowances they received for free. The figures include the 27 EU countries except Bulgaria and Cyprus.

Last year, EU countries allocated to their installations a total of 2,034 million allowances. (An allowance is a permit to emit one tonne of CO2.) Verified data show that these installations emitted during the same period 1,786 million tonnes of CO2, an average decrease in CO2 emissions of 1.4% per installation in 2012 over 2011. This decrease was expected and may be due to the stagnant European economy combined with the effect of energy efficiency and renewable energy policies, despite low coal and carbon prices, according to Carbon Market Data.

The Carbon Market Data report shows that the EU market may be oversupplied with carbon permits, forcing the price of emitting a ton of CO2 to plummet to only €4 ($5.13) at year-end. Eight years ago policy makers expected carbon units to trade at €25 to €30. Due to overly optimistic economic forecasts prior to the economic crises and overly generous allotments, many of the 11,000 powerplants and factories in Europe required to participate in ETS are sitting on stacks of unused permits. This is based on provisional data supplied by Carbon Market Data.

In November 2012, the European Commission, under political pressure, proposed to defer by one year the requirement for airlines to surrender emission allowances for flights into and out of Europe.
Carbon Market Data is a European-based company providing carbon market research and IT services.

(Kathryn M. Young and Aaron Karp ATW News)