Introduced in January 2005, the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) is the worlds first large-scale greenhouse-gas trading programme. The scheme covers all 25 EU Member States and aims to help member states achieve compliance with their commitments under the Kyoto Protocol. The EU Environment Council in December 2005 agreed that the inclusion of the aviation sector in the ETS was the best way forward on aviation emissions compared to other policy initiatives, and urged the Commission to bring forward a legislative proposal by the end of 2006. The Committees report considers a range of issues including: current and projected levels of air traffic and its environmental effects; policy sustainability on environmental and economic grounds; determining geographical scope and the limits for inclusion of flights and airlines, allocation methods and trading entities; the impact on air fares and air freight charges; and alternative policy options including fuel taxes; carbon offset schemes and investment in new technologies.

In February 2009, the European Union Directive 2008/101/EC was approved, clarifying how emissions from the aviation sector will be included in the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS). According to this directive, starting from 1st January 2012, all aircraft operators (nearly 4000), flying to or from any airport in EU territory will be included in EU ETS. This dissertation aims to provide qualitative and quantitative information about the consequences for aviation industry to be included in European Union Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) for the first trading period (2012). In this study, with empirical data, a scenario approach has also been used to quantify the potential 2012 CO2 emissions from aviation industry. So that, a scale of the possible total financial burden that aviation sector will be under for their CO2 emissions in the first trading period of EU ETS (2012) is calculated. According to the calculations, 2012 CO2 emissions of the flights covered under EU ETS can vary from 231.242 million tonne of CO2 to 277.036 million tonne of CO2 and the cost of 2012 CO2 emissions for the aviation sector can be between 967.47 million Euro and 2.54 billion Euro.

A significant volume of literature already exists concerning the inclusion of aviation in the EU-ETS. Most of the research laid its focus on specific industry levels such as the individual airline, the aviation industry in general or macroeconomic aspects. In this context, these studies tried to anticipate market reactions triggered by the EU-ETS by analyzing specific issues such as the financial impact on airlines, changes in competitive behavior or implications for the overall industry development. As a consequence, the existing studies took only a limited market view and made assumptions about expected developments in specific fields of the aviation industry. However, at the time of writing this thesis, conclusions about the scope of impact could hardly be drawn from existing impact assessments because of the wide range of issues that exceeded the scope of most impact studies. Hence, a broader research approach is needed which takes different analytical perspectives to describe the scope of impact of the EU-ETS and depict potential effects for the aviation industry.

Seminar paper from the year 2010 in the subject Politics - Environmental Policy, grade: 1,3, University of Münster, language: English, abstract: Within the scope of this course the presentation results from the commissioned group works, divided into thematic clusters - supplemented by active discussions - have acuminated the view on contents and concepts of this issued EU Policy. In doing so, it was a major aim to analyse political instruments within the EU, used to accesses various fields of environmental problems. Congruously in this Policy Paper, a specific instrument of EU Environmental Policy is chosen to be analysed and finally evaluated by its performances and capabilities as operational policy instrument. In the course of the seminar, the preservative subject area of Climate Policy has crystallised as an emerged and large-scaled subject to EU Environmental Policy. EU Climate Policy contacts nearly every field in European environmental adoption. Facing the latest scientific prognoses and reviewing European as well as common global environmental activity - the abatement of Climate Change appears to be one of the most superordinated aims. Hence, this policy topic especially defies an exemplary investigation on how EU policy-making proceeds, to protect environment in anent to a current issue. At present, the EU Emissions Trade System / -Scheme (EU ETS) as one of the most expansive pillars to the Union's Climate Policy and concurrently the most comprehensive global ETS, is ought to be completed within its second (of three) phases of development. The integration of EU-wide aviation into the system of EU ET proceeding since 2003 is a main part to the future enterprise in expanding EU Climate Policy. Within this step of integration the EU has declared its ambition to take a pioneering task in combating global Climate Change until 2020. During the current decade, critical scientists appraise the realisation of those aims as an impossible scenario for near future (Ha