The UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) is enhancing its tools to help the aviation industry address the significant challenge of reducing its environmental impact. In a consultation, the regulator has introduced new proposals to improve its environmental reporting capabilities.
The plans aim to shape the future of the UK Aviation Environmental Review (AER), a comprehensive tool designed to assess and provide an objective account of the UK aviation industry’s environmental performance.
The AER has been instrumental in highlighting and measuring the sector’s environmental footprint, offering recommendations for future improvements that can be used by the government, industry, and other stakeholders to drive positive environmental change.
The first AER report, published in December 2023, marked a significant milestone in measuring the environmental performance of the UK’s aviation sector. The report underscored the importance of the AER in guiding policy and fostering sustainability initiatives within the industry.
Harry Armstrong, Head of Sustainability at the UK Civil Aviation Authority said, “As the demand for air travel continues to grow, the need for flying to be more sustainable has never been more urgent. Our goal is to make the UK a global leader in aviation sustainability by providing robust, transparent data that can inform policy and drive progress.”
He added, “This consultation will help improve our ability to measure and report on the sector’s environmental performance, ensuring we are taking the right steps to tackle the environmental impacts of aviation.”
The consultation seeks input on how to develop the AER into a more robust tool that not only tracks environmental performance but also monitors the aviation sector’s progress against government and industry-set environmental targets.
The consultation represents a critical step toward a roadmap that will guide the future evolution of the AER, ensuring it remains a vital resource for improving environmental sustainability in aviation.
The consultation addresses the current reporting approach to identify whether there are additional relevant areas, such as noise, air quality, and climate change, that should be included in the CAA’s environmental analyses.
It also focuses on future presentation of environmental impacts to explore the value of providing more granular data on noise, air quality, and climate change to enhance understanding of the aviation industry’s environmental footprint.
The consultation also talks about additional reporting topics to assess whether stakeholders would benefit from seeing other environmental issues, beyond noise, climate change, and air quality, included in the AER for a more comprehensive overview of the industry’s impact.
This consultation will play a key role in shaping how the AER evolves to better support the UK’s aviation industry in meeting its environmental goals.
