Publications
This report exposes competing interpretations of Europe’s greenhouse gas targets which have stymied reform of Europe’s carbon budgets. We demonstrate how the EU’s carbon budgets have become unmoored from the original assumptions used to set their sub-targets and trajectories, causing them to fall out of alignment with the greenhouse gas targets they were designed to enforce. In particular, we document how changes in the scope of aviation emissions policed by the EU ETS, and potential changes in the geographical scope of the ETS and the ESR budgets following Brexit threaten Europe’s 2030 greenhouse gas target.
Our response to the CCC's Call for Evidence on Welsh Carbon Budgets lays out our recommended carbon accounting framework for Wales, especially as regards the treatment of the EU Emissions Trading Scheme. We also discuss how to protect Welsh climate targets against greenhouse gas inventory changes and against excessive reliance on international credits.
Our response to the CCC's Call for Evidence on the Scottish Climate Change Bill discusses how to protect Scotland’s climate targets against greenhouse gas inventory changes and the appropriate use of international credits. We pay particular attention to how the EU Emissions Trading Scheme should best be reflected within the future architecture of the Scottish carbon accounting framework.
In this briefing prepared for MEPs in the Parliament's Environment Committee on behalf of the Climate Action Network Europe, we review some of the main amendments affecting the environmental ambition of the post-2020 ETS revision, quantifying their impacts, ranking them in order of their environmental ambition and highlighting additional issues.
This briefing prepared with Anja Kolmuss on behalf of the Climate Action Network Europe, investigates how the supply of allowances in Phase 4 of the EU ETS (2021-2030) is affected by the starting point used. Given that emissions are expected to fall well below the ETS cap in 2020, we argue that the new cap risks building in new surplus from the start if the Phase 4 cap starts from the 2020 cap as the European Commissions has proposed. We draft an amendment to the new ETS Directive which would set the Phase 4 cap in reference to the latest emissions data available.
As rapporteur Ian Duncan prepares the European Parliament’s draft report on the ETS revision in consultation with the ENVI shadows, we have prepared this special briefing on how various carbon leakage thresholds affect the so-called “correction factor” for free allocation to industry. In this briefing we explore how changes in the trade intensity and the emissions intensity of the cement sector affect the application of the correction factor against various prominent proposals that have been discussed. We are grateful to CAN Europe for supporting this research.
On 2nd May 2016, Fredrick Federley, the rapporteur for the European Parliament’s Committee on Industry, Research and Energy (ITRE), published his draft report responding to the Commission's ETS Revision proposal. This briefing provides an initial assessment of that draft report, highlighting amendments of particular environmental significance. We find the ITRE draft report contains more good elements than bad and represents a significant step forward from the original Commission proposal in several respects. Nonetheless, we still see key areas for the draft report can be improved upon.