ICAO signs carbon emissions agreement

The UN’s aviation body, the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), agreed late on Friday (October 8), to reduce the impact of global aviation carbon emissions on climate change. Some 190 countries backed a global goal of improving fuel efficiency by 2% every year starting as early as 2013 and continuing to 2050. A key part of the agreement approved an initiative to create a global trading structure for carbon emissions created by air transport, which will be incorporated into the European Union’s emissions trading scheme. The agreement makes ICAO the ‘first’ UN agency ‘to lead a sector in the establishment