Athens, 15/05/2014 (Agence Europe) - The greenhouse gas emissions from the 12,000 industrial installations taking part in the EU's emissions quota trading system (ETS) are reported to have fallen by at least 3% in 2013, according to the statistics of the European Union Transaction Log (EUTL), duly checked and published by the European Commission on Wednesday 14 May. However, this good news is offset by the fact that there is still a surplus of quotas which rose even higher last year, to reach more than 2.1 billion (this surplus stood at around 2 billion at the end of 2012).
“The good news is that emissions declined faster than in previous years, even as Europe's economy started to recover from the recession. However, there is still a growing surplus of emission allowances that risks undermining the orderly functioning of the carbon market”, warned Connie Hedegaard, European Commissioner for Climate Action. She reiterated that backloading - the temporary freeze on 900 million surplus quotas withdrawn from the market between 2013 and 2015 to be released back onto it gradually - is “only a temporary measure”, to be added to by a structural reform of the market. Hence the creation of a market stability reserve proposed on 22 January of this year by the Commission. Hedegaard has called for this to be rapidly adopted.
The Commission acknowledges that it is hard to assess with total accuracy how far emissions 2013 fell compared to 2012, because the scope of application of the ETS has been extended for the third trading period of the ETS (which runs from 1 January 2013 to 31 December 2020). Verified emissions from fixed industrial installations rose last year to 1,895 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent, which corresponds to a decline “of at least 3%” compared to 2012, taking account only of the sectors covered by both the second and the third trading periods. The extra emissions resulting from the extension of the scope of the ETS are believed to represent between 79 and 100 million tonnes.
Fewer than 1% of the installations which declared their emissions for 2013 failed to observe the deadline of 30 April 2014 to renew their quotas. These were small installations, with cumulative contributions representing less than 1% of the emissions covered by the ETS.
The 2013 data do not cover emissions from aviation, as the airlines are not obliged to declare their 2013 emissions for flights made within the European Economic Area (EEA) until 30 April 2015. This is by virtue of the recent change to the ETS Directive (2008/101/EC) which takes account of the future global agreement on emissions from international civil aviation, to be concluded within an ICAO framework in 2016, to enter into force in 2020. (AN)