The polluter-pays principle is supposed to promote less polluting habits, including greenhouse gas emission reductions. However, carbon pricing cannot deliver its intended results by itself. To fully exploit its potential to speed up the decarbonisation of Europe, carbon pricing must be framed in an overall supportive policy context.
The crisis facing the British steel industry has over the past week dominated front pages with the news that Tata Steel will sell all of its UK plants. Some have finger-pointed to the EU’s Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) as one of the reasons for the disarray in the steel industry, but analysis done for Carbon Market Watch and by others has shown that the steel sector in Europe has in fact benefited from EU’s climate policies.
This policy brief interprets the findings of a new study by CE Delft that shows how energy-intensive companies in Sweden have massively profited from their pollution to the count of €700 million because they are deemed to be at risk of “carbon leakage”. “Carbon leakage” refers to a hypothetical situation where companies transfer production to countries with weaker climate policies in order to lower their costs. Under the current EU Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) rules, industrial companies that are believed to be at risk of “carbon leakage” are awarded free pollution permits.
This policy brief interprets the findings of a new study by CE Delft that shows how energy-intensive companies in the Netherlands have massively profited from their pollution to the count of €1 billion because they are deemed to be at risk of “carbon leakage”. “Carbon leakage” refers to a hypothetical situation where companies transfer production to countries with weaker climate policies in order to lower their costs. Under the current EU Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) rules, industrial companies that are believed to be at risk of “carbon leakage” are awarded free pollution permits.
This policy brief interprets the findings of a new study by CE Delft that shows how energy-intensive companies in Germany have massively profited from their pollution to the count of €4.5 billion because they are deemed to be at risk of “carbon leakage”. “Carbon leakage” refers to a hypothetical situation where companies transfer production to countries with weaker climate policies in order to lower their costs. Under the current EU Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) rules, industrial companies that are believed to be at risk of “carbon leakage” are awarded free pollution permits.
This policy brief interprets the findings of a new study by CE Delft that shows how energy-intensive companies in France have massively profited from their pollution to the count of €2.7 billion because they are deemed to be at risk of “carbon leakage”. “Carbon leakage” refers to a hypothetical situation where companies transfer production to countries with weaker climate policies in order to lower their costs. Under the current EU Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) rules, industrial companies that are believed to be at risk of “carbon leakage” are awarded free pollution permits.
This policy brief interprets the findings of a new study by CE Delft that shows how energy-intensive companies in the UK have massively profited from their pollution to the count of €3.1 billion because they are deemed to be at risk of “carbon leakage”. “Carbon leakage” refers to a hypothetical situation where companies transfer production to countries with weaker climate policies in order to lower their costs. Under the current EU Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) rules, industrial companies that are believed to be at risk of “carbon leakage” are awarded free pollution permits.
Brussels, 15 March 2016: New analysis shows how industry across Europe has earned a €24 billion windfall from 2008 to 2014, under the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS). This is the main policy used across the EU to “cost-effectively”[i] reduce CO2 emissions across industry. The findings in a report ‘Calculation of additional profits of sectors and firms from the EU ETS’, from independent environmental analysts CE Delft, adds momentum to calls from MEPs and campaigners for an overhaul of the policy ahead of the negotiations to revisit the ETS rules this year at EU level.
The European Commission is expected to publish legislation on how to include the land use, land use change and forestry (LULUCF) sector into the EU’s 2030 climate framework in the summer of 2016. Three options presented by the Commission on how to do this suggest various levels of integration with other sectors, from keeping LULUCF in a separate pillar, combining the sector with methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N20) agriculture emissions, or adding the sector into the Effort Sharing Decision (ESD).
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