Jet fuel’s enviable exemption from taxation dates back to the mid-1940s and the Chicago Convention, an international agreement set up to promote civil aviation. Politics and vested interests have prevented any major updates to the deal ever since.
As the European Commission – the EU’s executive branch – mulls how to review all the bloc’s energy and climate laws to promote more emission cuts over the coming decade, kerosene’s free ride is standing out more and more as an inexplicable anomaly.
The forthcoming rule changes will include shipping in emissions trading for the first time, slap a carbon price on fuel providers and aim to increase renewable power capacity. Those sectors are eyeing aviation and asking themselves why air travel is not on the radar.
That is why the climate update will propose changes to the energy taxation directive, a rulebook that has not been reviewed for nearly two decades and which most observers say is extremely out of date...