Experts discuss linking CO2 trading schemes European Union Sustainable Dev.


In Short:
Environmental experts and stakeholders analysed the potential for linking the EU Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) with emerging carbon markets worldwide.
RELATED
Climate change - EU Emissions Trading Scheme (EU-ETS)
EU post-2012 climate change policy
Brief News:
Gathered under the auspices of the Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy and the German Ministry for Education and Research, speakers from diverse institutional and national backgrounds tackled issues of linking emissions trading schemes at a Brussels conference on 29-30 May.
To open the debate, the European Commission reiterated its expectations that member states deliver their second phase allocation plans by 30 June, and expressed its readiness to take action if they fail do to so.
In the first part of the debate, participants drew an uneven picture of existing domestic emissions' reduction initiatives, with countries such as Switzerland, Australia and the US on the progress side vs. Canada and Russia in a less advanced situation. Against this backdrop, the issue of compatibility of designs between the different ETS overwhelmed the debate. While some systems, such as the US one, are said to have been framed in a purely national scope (Wolfgang Sterk, Wuppertal Institute), many others would simply not fulfil two essential requirements to be compatible with the EU ETS – namely, to be mandatory and not to include price caps (Alexander Savelkoul, Essent).
The rest of the discussions revolved around the potential economic and environmental impacts of linking trading schemes. Many speakers criticized the EU ETS for its inefficiency in cutting Kyoto compliance costs, suggesting that linking it to "similarly suboptimal non-EU systems" would only worsen that trend. On a more positive note, Ralf Schüle (Wuppertal Institute) viewed linking schemes as an instrument for keeping open the door for "non-ratifiers [of the Kyoto protocol] to participate in the emerging international carbon markets, and thus serve to draw them back into the fold." That way, it could function as a non-negligible "parallel track of international mitigation policy."
Links
Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy: Conference Report: Potential Impacts of Linking the European Union Emissions Trading System with Emerging Carbon Markets in other Countries (May 2006) [Summary]
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Experts discuss linking CO2 trading schemes
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Experts discuss linking CO2 trading schemes (Euractiv.com)
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