On Tuesday 20 April, in an online debate hosted by Politico, Diederik Samsom – head of cabinet to Frans Timmermans, the Executive Vice-President of the European Commission responsible for the European Green Deal – said that the European Commission might consider setting up a mechanism adjacent to the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) that would cover road transport and buildings.
In response to Marco Mensink, Director of the European Chemical Industry Council (Cefic), who expressed concerns that the inclusion of these two sectors in the ETS would create problems in terms of price elasticity, Mr Samsom said: “If we were to propose it and include these two sectors within the ETS system, it would be an adjacent system, maybe with links (between the two systems), and these links would increase over time”.
“We see merit in extending the ETS to the buildings and road transport sectors for three reasons”, he said.
Firstly, the European Commission believes that a new instrument is needed to encourage these sectors to meet their decarbonisation targets.
The second reason is that an emissions trading scheme allows the incentive price to be set “exactly at the point where the decarbonisation action can take place”, explained Samsom.
He also added: “The unique aspect of an emissions trading scheme is that it will also give you the revenue to mitigate price increases in a very targeted way: fighting energy poverty”. (Original version in French by Damien Genicot)