Airlines for America is throwing its support behind what would be the first emissions standards for commercial aircraft, saying the new rule is needed if U.S. airlines want to operate in international markets.

The Environment Protection Agency on Wednesday proposed adopting the International Civil Aviation Organization's fuel efficiency and carbon dioxide emissions standards for future aircraft. ICAO is a United National agency that codified the standards in 2017 after adoption by all its member states, A4A said in a statement.

The standards applies to new models of commercial aircraft starting this year and existing in-production models starting in 2023, according to A4A. U.S. aircraft manufacturers need to have their aircraft certified to the standards to be able to sell their aircraft in the international market and for U.S. airlines to be able to deploy those aircraft in international service.

"EPA's proposal to adopt ICAO's fuel efficiency and CO2 certification standard for newly manufactured aircraft is good for our industry, for our country and for the world," said Nancy Young, A4A vice president, environmental affairs. "Although the U.S. airlines are already driven to be highly fuel- and carbon-efficient, this stringent new emissions standard will help U.S. airlines make a green industry even greener."

Aviation accounted for 2.4% of total CO2 emissions in 2018, the Environmental and Energy Study Institute noted in 2019. Recent studies have found the amount of CO2 produced by airlines have been growing in recent years as the amount of air travel surged, although the recent pandemic as greatly reduced the number of flights in 2020.

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