Federal Aviation Administration Touts New ‘Fuel Efficiency’ Rule, Contradicts Own Documents

An Airbus A330-200 aircraft of Air Transat airlines takes off in Colomiers near Toulouse, France, on July 10, 2018. Regis Duvignau/Reuters

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has proposed new fuel efficiency standards for aircraft purportedly aimed at lowering the impact of air travel on climate change.

“Today is an important step forward in reducing the amount of greenhouse gas emissions released by our nation’s airplanes and ultimately reaching President Biden’s ambitious goal of net-zero emissions by 2050,” Department of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said in a June 15 press release.

The rule mandates more fuel efficiency for new subsonic jet aircraft, turboprop and propeller aircraft that are not yet certified, and new aircraft manufactured after Jan. 1, 2028. The proposed rules would not apply to planes already in service.

Commercial aircraft that would be required to comply with the new fuel efficiency standards include the Boeing 777-X, the Airbus A330-neo, civil turboprop airplanes like ATR 72 and Vikings Limited Q400, and business jets like the Cessna Citation. Prior to the pandemic, these types of civil aircraft were responsible for 3 percent of total American greenhouse gas emissions and 10 percent of domestic transportation emissions, the FAA said.

The emission standard in the proposed rule uses a metric that equates fuel consumption and efficiency with reductions in carbon dioxide. The rule also includes a wide range of fuel efficiency measures for the manufacturing phase of aircraft, including engine propulsion efficiency and improvements to aerodynamics.

But the FAA’s technical documents do not indicate that there would be a significant reduction in carbon dioxide emissions, The Hill reported. According to the agency’s regulatory impact analysis document, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimated that “there would not be reductions in fuel burn and CO2 emissions” beyond the “business as usual baseline.”

The EPA said it considered such a result “reasonable” as all aircraft will either meet the standards or be out of production by the time the standards come into effect.

When asked by The Hill as to why there is a discrepancy between the FAA statement and the government’s technical documents, the agency argued that setting standards in the first place is in itself a win, as the agency anticipated “tightening standards” in the future.

Since President Joe Biden assumed office, there has been a push to use the power of federal agencies to implement “clean energy” measures. In March, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) made a proposal to mandate public companies to issue climate-related disclosures.

The proposal attracted strong opposition from several law and finance professors across the country who criticized the SEC in an April 25 letter to the agency.

“Rather than provide investor protection, the Proposal seems to be heavily influenced by a small but powerful cohort of environmental activists and institutional investors, mostly index funds and asset managers, promoting climate consciousness as part of their business models,” the letter said.