Airplane Fuel Efficiency Certification

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION <SUBAGY>Federal Aviation Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>14 CFR Parts 21, 38, 121, and 125</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No.: FAA-2022-0241 Amdt. No. 121-391, 125-75, 38-1, 21-107]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 2120-AL54</RIN> <SUBJECT>Airplane Fuel Efficiency Certification</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), Department of Transportation (DOT). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Final rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> This action adopts fuel efficiency requirements for certification of certain airplanes. These certification requirements implement the emissions standards adopted by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to allow manufacturers to certificate their airplanes for fuel efficiency in the United States. This action also fulfills the FAA's Clean Air Act obligations to enforce implementation of EPA's aircraft emissions standards for greenhouse gas emissions. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Effective April 16, 2024. The incorporation by reference of a certain publication listed in this rule is approved by the Director of the Federal Register as of April 16, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> For information on where to obtain copies of rulemaking documents and other information related to this final rule, see “How to Obtain Additional Information” in the <E T="02">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION</E> section of this document. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> For technical questions concerning this action, contact Ralph Iovinelli, Office of Policy, International Affairs, & Environment, Emissions Division (AEE-300), Federal Aviation Administration, 800 Independence Avenue SW, Washington, DC 20591; telephone 202-267-3566; email <E T="03">ralph.iovinelli@faa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Executive Summary</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Purpose of the Regulatory Action</HD> As a signatory State to the Chicago Convention, the United States must establish minimum standards consistent with those prescribed by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) on a wide range of aviation-related matters, including aircraft emissions, or file a difference. The United States' adoption of the 2017 ICAO carbon dioxide (CO <E T="52">2</E> ) emission standards for certain airplanes aligns United States law with the ICAO standards. Moreover, the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1970 (Clean Air Act) direct the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to adopt standards applicable to the emission of any air pollutant from any class of aircraft engines. The Clean Air Act also directs the Secretary of Transportation (and by delegation, the Administrator of the FAA) to implement the standards adopted by the EPA. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> On January 11, 2021, the EPA published a final rule adopting new domestic airplane greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions standards in 40 Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) part 1030. <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> As required by the Clean Air Act  <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> , the FAA is implementing those EPA standards through this final rule by adopting new certification regulations in 14 CFR part 38 for fuel efficiency for certain covered airplanes. The applicability of these regulations and the regulatory emissions limits are the same as those adopted by ICAO in its airplane CO <E T="52">2</E> emission standards. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  “The Secretary of Transportation, after consultation with the Administrator, shall prescribe regulations to insure compliance with all standards prescribed under section 7571 of this title by the Administrator. The regulations of the Secretary of Transportation shall include provisions making such standards applicable in the issuance, amendment, modification, suspension, or revocation of any certificate authorized by part A of subtitle VII of title 49 or the Department of Transportation Act.” 42 U.S.C. 7572 </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>   <E T="04">Federal Register</E> <E T="03">Control of Air Pollution from Airplanes and Airplane Engines: GHG Emission Standards and Test Procedures,</E> ” Environmental Protection Agency, pp. 2136-2174. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>  42 U.S.C. 7571 </FTNT> This rulemaking establishes fuel efficiency certification requirements for certain subsonic jet airplanes with a maximum takeoff mass greater than 5,700 kilograms and for certain propeller-driven airplanes with a maximum takeoff mass greater than 8,618 kilograms. Under this final rule, an airplane is subject to these certification requirements: (1) at new (original) type certification; (2) upon manufacture of any covered airplane after January 1, 2028; or (3) when a modification to a covered airplane meets change criteria specified in the regulations. This rulemaking excepts from applicability airplanes used for firefighting, amphibious airplanes, airplanes lower than specific masses, reciprocating engine airplanes, non-pressurized airplanes, and certain specialized operations airplanes. For covered airplanes, a certification applicant must demonstrate that the airplane meets these new part 38 requirements. The new part 38 requirements established by this rulemaking prescribe fuel efficiency limits, which are the emission standards adopted by the EPA. This rulemaking expresses fuel efficiency limits as maximum permitted fuel efficiency metric (FEM) values that are determined by the maximum takeoff mass of the airplane. Thus, the applicant must determine an FEM value to demonstrate compliance against the applicable fuel efficiency limit. The two certifiable components of the FEM are the specific air range (SAR) and the reference geometric factor (RGF). The SAR represents the distance an airplane can travel per unit of fuel consumed and is determined by direct flight test measurement or use of a validated performance model. The RGF is a representation of airplane fuselage size based on the floor area of pressurized space in an airplane. The technical detail needed to determine the FEM value of an airplane is included in Appendix A to part 38. An applicant must receive FAA approval for all information the applicant uses to calculate the FEM value of an airplane. To comply with part 38, the FEM value must not exceed the airplane's applicable fuel efficiency limit. In addition, to fully implement the EPA standards through the FAA's certification process, this rulemaking makes corresponding changes to the FAA certification procedures in part 21 to include compliance with part 38 as a certification requirement. Moreover, this rulemaking requires that the FEM value of the airplane, along with other part 38 compliance information, be placed in an FAA-approved section of the flight manual of the airplane. The FAA's adoption of these certification requirements implements the emissions standards adopted by the EPA, allows manufacturers to certificate their airplane for fuel efficiency in the United States, and fulfills the statutory obligations of the FAA under the Clean Air Act. The FAA's promulgation of this Airplane Fuel Efficiency regulation is the final step for the United States in implementing the 2017 ICAO carbon dioxide (CO <E T="52">2</E> ) emission standards for certain airplanes promulgated in Annex 16 Volume III under the Chicago Convention. <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. Changes Made in This Final Rule</HD> The FAA has adopted part 38 and sections of parts 21, 121, and 125 largely as they were proposed in a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) that was published on June 15, 2022. <SU>4</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>4</SU>   <E T="04">Federal Register</E> <E T="03">Airplane Fuel Efficiency Certification,</E> ” Federal Aviation Administration, pp. 36076-36091. </FTNT> The FAA considered the public comments it received on its proposal and the adopted rule reflects consideration of those comments. The FAA received over 60 comments on the NPRM, ranging from suggested typographical and grammatical edits to substantive comments on proposed regulatory text and language in the NPRM preamble. As a result of these comments, the FAA made changes throughout the regulatory text. For instance, the FAA revised the language in the applicability and change criteria sections (§§ 38.1 and 38.19) to clarify the applicability of part 38 to newly built airplanes and modifications to airplanes. These revisions clarify this final rule is not applicable to modifications of in-service airplanes that have not previously shown compliance to part 38 prior to the modification, except for manufacturers who are required to comply with part 38 for in-production airplanes that have not received their first certificate of airworthiness as provided in the applicability section of this rule. The FAA also made edits to several technical requirements in Appendix A ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> center of gravity, airplane weight, fuel samples, flight test procedures, and calculations and corrections of test data). Revisions to sections within parts 21 and 121 include: the inadvertent omission of the reference to these new fuel efficiency certification requirements in the certification provisions (§ 21.21), consistency edits (§ 21.93), and correction of an error (§ 121.141). <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Authority for This Rulemaking</HD> The FAA's authority to issue rules on aviation safety is found in Title 49 of the United States Code (49 U.S.C.). Subtitle I, Section 106 describes the authority of the FAA Administrator. The Clean Air Act, 42 U.S.C. 7572, authorizes the Secretary of Transportation to implement aviation emission standards adopted by the EPA to insure compliance with the same. Furthermore, 49 CFR 1.83(c) delegates to the FAA Administrator the authority to carry out the functions of this section of the Clean Air Act. This rulemaking ado ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 198k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━