Leaders in the environmental movement, all eyes are on European countries as they come up with initiatives to help combat climate change. This week brought the latest in progressive policies, when 11 companies, representing 30 different airports and one quarter of Europe’s air traffic, signed a plan to cut their carbon dioxide emissions to zero. But as of yet, the plan has no deadline.

Despite a lack of deadline, the plan is still significant. According to the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), aviation’s total CO2 emissions account for 2% of global emissions’ impact on climate change.

More from Reuters:

The Airport Carbon Accreditation scheme covers about 26 percent of passenger traffic in Europe and includes some of Europe’s biggest airports, including Frankfurt, Athens, Dublin, Amsterdam’s Schiphol, Italy’s Milan Malpensa and Orly in Paris.

But London’s Heathrow — whose owner BAA is struggling with a partial break-up — did not sign up.

ACI Europe’s director general Olivier Jankovec told Reuters the group’s vast and diverse membership had made it impractical to set a deadline for airports to achieve carbon neutrality.

“If we’d looked for a date, we would never have got agreement,” he told Reuters. “But we are engaging our members on the issue.”

Read more here and here.

[Photo: Thomas.L, Flickr]