The European Union’s expansion of the European Emissions Trading System, known as ETS2, will extend the “polluter pays” principle to buildings and road transport. This will make carbon pricing more tangible to EU citizens but can also help them decarbonise.
Policymakers must break the magnetism between carbon markets and carbon removals by putting in place non-market incentives. This requires a rethinking of the EU’s Carbon Removals Certification Framework process and setting the right targets for 2040.
With its focus on tonnes of carbon dioxide discharged into the atmosphere, the EU’s Emissions Trading System can appear to be technical and immaterial to most people. To uncover the human dimension of the EU ETS, with its challenges and opportunities, Carbon Market Watch
Following the revamping of the EU’s Emissions Trading System, the associated Innovation Fund also requires an overhaul to ensure it serves the purpose of accelerating decarbonisation. Here are Carbon Market Watch’s and Sandbag’s recommendations.
The steel industry’s strategic importance coupled with its strong lobbying power have combined to shield it from a tightening of the Emissions Trading System. This is harmful to the climate, unfair to taxpayers and hurts the sector’s long-term competitiveness.
The EU must ignore lobbying efforts from industry to certify the storage of carbon dioxide in cement or concrete as carbon removals.
Although the enlarged Emissions Trading System will impose a cost on emissions from buildings, the revenues it generates should be used to decarbonise European homes and to eradicate energy poverty. Some trailblazing projects showcase these possibilities.
EU environment ministers will soon hammer out their position on the revision of one of the largest and most impactful environmental policies in Europe, the Industrial Emissions Directive. One crucial element seems to have been left out yet again: the regulation of greenhouse gas
The debate on EU industrial subsidies in the face of the US Inflation Reduction Act and against the backdrop of the Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) and Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) deals raises some uncomfortable questions.
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