Brussels, 13/07/2012 (Agence Europe) - At the end of July, the European Commission is expected to unveil draft legislation to postpone surpluses of greenhouse gas emissions quotas in order to deal with shortcomings with the ETS (carbon-trading system) for the third trading period, which starts in 2013. The European Parliament is eagerly awaiting details of the proposals. The importance of urgently reforming the carbon trading system was illustrated on 12 January 2012 in a unanimous vote by an EP committee on the EU energy efficiency directive (see EUROPE 10654). MEP Claude Turmes (Greens/EFA/Luxembourg), rapporteur, welcomed the vote but said a lot needed to be done if the target of 20% energy savings by 2020 was to be reached, and reform of the ETS is urgently required to deal with huge shortfalls in the EU's climate change policy tool that is damaging energy efficiency.
"While the new energy efficiency legislation represents a major step forward for EU climate policy, it has added to the urgent need to address the problems with the misfiring emissions trading scheme. The carbon market is clearly in need of regulative intervention in order to address the oversupply of emissions permits and the resulting excessively low carbon price”, Claude Turmes said. The Luxembourg Green politician said that while the Commission is committed to do this in the context of negotiations on the energy efficiency directive, it must come forward with proposals to address oversupply of allowances and the unrealistically low carbon price before the summer. "As a first step, this means limiting forthcoming auctions of emissions permits. But ultimately, the Commission will have to completely retire an amount of emissions permits. The sooner this is done, the better”, Turmes said.
The immediate solution being considered by the Commission is to postpone to 2014-2020 some of the quotas that should have been auctioned off in 2013-2015 to increase the price of carbon (which has fallen very low, to less than seven euros a tonne) to act as an incentive for investing in green technology.
The Cypriot Presidency of the Council of the EU aims under its climate change adjustment policy to ensure that, in October, the EU's negotiating mandate is set for the UN conference in Doha at the end of the year (COP 18 in Qatar) and the presidency wants the ETS to be maintained, protected and made more effective. With this in mind, it will be opening EU27 talks on the ETS annual report due to be unveiled by the European Commission later this year (and not in 2013 as laid down in the ETS directive), explained Sofoclis Aletraris, Cypriot agriculture, rural development and environment minister, to the EP on 10 July in a meeting with the environment committee to explain the Cypriot Presidency's work programme and its focus onwater and adapting to climate change. (AN/transl.fl)