EU Emissions Trading

If you're interested in tackling climate change in the EU, you need to be interested in emissions trading.

Why? Because the EU Emissions Trading Scheme covers a massive 50% of all EU carbon emissions which are produced by power companies and industry. And if the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) isn't working properly to cut these emissions, the EU as a whole will fail to tackle climate change effectively.

Sandbag is committed to scrutinising the EU Emissions Trading Scheme to find out where it isn't working, and to lobbying for it to be improved. Our new report 'ETS S.O.S' reveals that as things stand it could be up to seven years before any further cuts to emissions in the EU need to be made under the scheme because of a potential 1.6 billion surplus of permits to pollute.

* Industrial sectors have been given more permits than they needed and are now set to make windfall profits of up to 5.4 billion euros from selling these.
* Million of cheap offsetting credits equivalent to permits were also made available under the scheme which companies can buy instead of making the more expensive investments to actually cut their carbon emissions.
* Governments have a further 300 million permits held back which are now clearly not needed.

Sandbag is calling for immediate action to tighten the Emissions Trading Scheme caps so that emissions must be reduced 30% by 2020. This is the minimum the EU should be doing, and requires only an extra 0.1% effort per year from 2013. With Copenagen on the way, its vital that the EU steps up its game.

You can join in the discussion in our forum as well as check out our map of installations covered by the scheme.