UK ETS and CORSIA Enforcement Update: What the Environment Agency Changed

From consultation to final policy outcome

The Environment Agency ran an eight-week consultation from 21 May to 16 July 2024 on changes to its enforcement and sanctions policy. The purpose was to bring the UK Emissions Trading Scheme and the Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation more clearly into the policy framework and to make small related updates to the main text.

The main change is formal coverage for UK ETS and CORSIA

Following the consultation, the agency published an updated enforcement and sanctions policy together with a revised Annex 2. That annex now includes section G for the UK ETS and section H for CORSIA, setting out how the regulator approaches climate-related civil penalties in those areas. The page also notes that UK ETS has operated since 2021 and that CORSIA was brought into UK law through the 2021 order covering international aviation.

Photo by Oleksiy Konstantinidi,🌻🇺🇦🌻 on Pexels

Why aviation businesses should pay attention

This is not a new border rule for travellers and it does not change the passenger journey. Its significance is regulatory: airlines and other affected operators now have a clearer statement of how enforcement policy aligns with schemes that are already part of UK law. For compliance teams, that should make expectations easier to understand and audit work easier to structure.