Ever on the lookout for sources of pollution, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has announced it will take a look at aircrafts -- and the aviation industry -- in its efforts to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.
As an initial step in a possible regulatory process, possible health dangers of such pollution are being studied, the EPA says, and findings will be announced in April.
If aircraft greenhouse emissions are in fact deemed to be a risk, there will be a "finding of endangerment" issued, a legal requirement for beginning the procedure of drafting proposed new rules, the agency said.
Environmental activists say the announcement has been a long time coming, but applauded the EPA's announcement.
"This is late, incredibly late, but it's still incredibly good news because EPA realizes it has to act itself," Vera Pardee, a lawyer with environmental advocacy group Center for Biological Diversity, said earlier this week. "If it makes a positive endangerment finding, which we completely expect will happen, then it has no choice but to start regulating aircraft emissions independent of and regardless of what the international community does."
The center and a number of other environmental activist groups brought a suit against the EPA earlier in the year in an effort to force the agency to take action on aircraft emissions regulation.
The EPA previously followed the prescribed regulatory process for motor vehicles, after finding their greenhouse gas emission posed a danger, and later followed the same path to regulate emission from stationary power plants.
If the EPA carries through with regulations on aircraft emission, it is likely to push other nations to consider an international agreement on such pollution during negotiations on a new world climate agreement next year in Paris, Pardee says.
"There is no choice [for the EPA] but to craft and adopt emissions standards for aircraft," she says. "And once the U.S. acts, the world will have to follow."
She compared it to the EPA's move to let California regulate motor vehicle emissions on its own, which led to nationwide standards so manufacturers could have consistency.
The same could happen in the aviation world with the EPA leading the way, she says.
"No one in the international community will want a hodgepodge of regulation."
Officials in the airline industry have also applauded the EPA move, saying they back a global agreement to limit aircraft emissions.
"The aviation industry has set very aggressive goals to reduce emissions," Boeing spokeswoman Jessica Kowal said.
