Societies and businesses face increasing uncertainty due to more frequent and intense extreme weather events, instability in global energy and commodity markets, and unclear climate commitments by key international partners. The European Green Deal potentially provides a broad and strong suite of policy tools that have the power to create the necessary stability and certainty…
The European Commission’s proposed revision of the EU’s Emissions Trading System for aviation and implementation of the Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation (CORSIA) lays out the groundwork for the welcome phasing out of free allocation. However, it fails to uphold, let alone strengthen, carbon pricing for the aviation sector by prioritising the risky and ineffective implementation of CORSIA over a full-scope inclusion of flights under the EU ETS.
The Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) could offer a better hope of decarbonisation in energy-intensive industries than free allowances, and could create a first-mover advantage for EU industry in the global race to decarbonisation. However, this will only be possible if this tool is designed to provide real incentives for industries within and outside Europe…
The revision of the EU Emissions Trading System (ETS) represents a huge opportunity to strengthen the Directive to ensure it is in line with the 1.5˚C target under the Paris Agreement. However, the European Commission’s proposal includes two major shortcomings that should be reconsidered. Firstly, the EU-wide 55% emission reduction target proposed is inadequate to…
Carbon Market Watch fully supports the comprehensive feedback provided by the European Environmental Bureau to the revision and welcomes the opportunity to give specific views on how the Industrial Emissions Directive (IED) should be revised to support industrial decarbonisation in a complementary manner to the EU Emission Trading System. While we support the general direction…
Summary The EU Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) covers around 40% of the EU’s greenhouse gas emissions from more than 11,000 installations and airlines. As part of the EU Green Deal implementation, the scheme will be revised starting in the summer of 2021. The revision is a crucial opportunity to ensure that the sectors covered…
Key elements for the revision of the EU ETS The upcoming revision of the EU Emission Trading System represents a crucial opportunity to strengthen the Directive and ensure it contributes to the goals of the Paris Agreement. Carbon Market Watch believes that the upcoming review should include the following elements. An increase of the Linear…
Carbon Market Watch (CMW) welcomes the opportunity to provide feedback to this European Commission Inception Impact Assessment (IIA), and urges the Commission, Parliament, and Council to adopt measures which strengthen the EU’s climate action in the aviation sector, as it currently falls short of the required level of ambition to meet the Paris Agreement’s objective…
Carbon Market Watch fully supports efforts to price GHG emissions, within and outside the EU. The EU ETS has been successful for certain sectors, but has failed to incentivise large scale decarbonisation of European industry, in part because of its excessive measures to guard against the hypothetical risk of carbon leakage. Industrial companies have gained…
Given that there is as yet no hard evidence of carbon leakage caused by indirect costs passed through by power companies, Carbon Market Watch cannot support using taxpayer money to protect the industry from an unproven “carbon leakage risk”. Indirect cost compensation, coupled with free allocation of emission allowances, undermines the polluter pays principle and…
Carbon pricing 
International transport 
Climate governance 
Fair climate action