The European Commission’s planned exemptions from the EU Emissions Trading System (ETS) for shipping would leave more than 25 million tonnes of CO2 out of the EU carbon market, an amount equal to Denmark’s carbon emissions, estimates the NGO Transport & Environment (T&E) in a report published on Thursday 13 January.
Presented on 14 July 2021, the Commission’s proposal for a revised ETS (see EUROPE 12762/1) envisages applying the ETS only to ships above a certain size (5,000 GT) and introducing exemptions for certain types of ships such as those serving oil and gas installations, fishing vessels, naval vessels, and yachts.
According to the institution, its proposal extends the ETS to about two-thirds of shipping emissions, or 90 million tonnes of CO2.
Judging the exemptions to be “arbitrary”, T&E estimates that just over half of European ships would fall outside the ETS, “despite them accounting for nearly 20% of the EU’s shipping emissions”.
The NGO therefore proposes to follow a different approach to that based on ship size, by introducing a threshold (1,000 tonnes of CO2 per year) below which ships would not be covered by the ETS.
According to T&E, this system would cover 12% more emissions than the Commission’s proposal, while limiting the administrative burden.
See the report: https://bit.ly/33gIVfX (Original version in French by Damien Genicot)