- Transport Secretary will call on countries worldwide to agree long-term goal for reducing aviation carbon emissions
- Earlier this week, the UK led a meeting of 56 states pushing for higher ambition to tackle aviation’s climate impacts
- Government continues to deliver on COP26 commitments
Decarbonising the aviation sector requires global action, new Transport Secretary Anne-Marie Trevelyan will tell the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) Assembly in Montreal today.
The UK is attending the Assembly with the aim of reaching agreements that help secure the sustainability and resilience of global aviation.
During the Transport Secretary’s opening statement, ICAO – the United Nations’ body in charge of ensuring aviation is safe, secure, and environmentally friendly – will be urged to adopt a long-term goal to clean up the sector and reduce its emissions in line with the Paris Agreement.
The Secretary of State will also highlight the need for countries around the world to learn lessons from the international response to the Covid-19 pandemic, and to ensure the global aviation sector is better prepared for future threats, such as public health crises.
Her intervention comes after the International Aviation Climate Ambition Coalition, launched by the UK at COP26, met on Monday in Montreal. Now bringing together governments from 56 countries across the world, the Coalition calls for ambitious action by ICAO and is committed to promoting use of new fuels and technologies to tackle aviation’s contribution to climate change.
The Assembly will be asked to agree to focus on new aircraft technologies and unlocking the full potential of sustainable aviation fuels on a global scale.
The push for stronger international action comes after the Government published its Jet Zero Strategy in July, which set out how UK aviation will achieve net zero emissions by 2050 through new fuels, technologies and other measures, and made clear how crucial international action and collaboration through ICAO is to effectively address aviation’s emissions.
The UK has also committed to introduce a Sustainable Aviation Fuels (SAF) mandate from 2025, requiring at least 10% of jet fuel to be from sustainable sources by 2030, with increasing proportions of SAF blended from 2025.
Turning to support for Ukraine, the Transport Secretary will reaffirm the UK’s continued condemnation of the Russian Government’s reprehensible actions which violate international law, the UN Charter, and global aviation rules.