Rulemaking environmental activities

Within EASA’s Rulemaking Directorate, the Environmental Protection department is tasked with all rulemaking activities that are specifically related to aviation environmental protection within the EASA remit.
Its three main task areas are:

  1. to develop and maintain the environmental essential requirements, implementing rules, certification specifications and guidance material,
  2. to establish international cooperation with respect to environmental certification, and
  3. to give technical support to the European Commission.

The Department communicates/interfaces on its activities with the European Commission, other EU Agencies, Member States,  National Aviation Authorities' , Industry, ICAO, and other relevant stakeholders.

Developing and maintaining the environmental requirements

The primary task of the Environmental Protection Department is to ensure that the environmental protection essential requirements in Article 6 of the EASA Basic Regulation; the Part-21 Implementing Rules for environmental certification requirements; and the Certification Specifications CS-36 (noise) and CS-34 (emissions) are kept up to date through the rulemaking process of EASA. To this end the Department contributes to the rulemaking programme and executes the steps as defined in the Rulemaking process.
Because ICAO's Annex 16 Volumes I and II are the basis of the environmental essential requirements, the Department is actively involved in the Working Groups and Task Groups that are established by ICAO's Committee on Aviation Environmental Protection (CAEP). This Committee has been established to undertake specific studies, as approved by the Council, related to control of aircraft noise and gaseous emissions from aircraft engines.
Aircraft engines are currently certified for Nitrogen Oxides (NOX), Carbon Monoxide (CO), Unburnt Hydrocarbons (UHC) and Soot (Smoke Number) on the basis of a reference Landing and Take-Off (LTO) cycle. Since the early 1990s, the LTO NOX emissions certification limits have been reduced by 50% by the CAEP. Within the Committee, EASA is also working on setting new certification requirements for aircraft CO2 emissions and aircraft engine particulate matter emissions, as well as more stringent aircraft noise standards.
Leveraging its experience from applying the standards, EASA contributes by identifying and disseminating best practices in environmental certification, striving to maintain worldwide harmonisation and the improvement of such standards.

International cooperation on environmental issues

Another important activity of the Department is to establish technical cooperation in the field of environmental certification with third country aviation authorities.
The goal is to facilitate the exchange of products between the EU and third countries while ensuring that a thorough verification of a product's compliance with relevant environmental Certification Specifications is carried out.
Standardisation, quality control and auditing are pre-requisites in reaching these goals.

Technical support

The Department supports the European Commission with technical advice, for example in its role as Observer to ICAO's CAEP and in its participation at other bodies that address aviation environmental policy such as the Committee on the Abatement of Nuisances Caused by Air Transport of the European Civil Aviation Conference (ECAC-ANCAT).
The Department also provides interpretation and assistance to other EASA Directorates, as well as national and industry experts charged with the implementation of environmental regulations.