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Nations’ emission-reduction pledges under the Copenhagen accord will be “very difficult to deliver” without an international carbon-trading system, Jos Delbeke, director general at the European Commission’s climate department, told a conference in Brussels today. “We have to link up the Emissions Trading System to systems elsewhere,” Delbeke said. “Even if the debates are going to be heated in the U.S. or China or Australia, we are very committed to have a system of linked carbon-trade schemes by 2015.” The EU Emissions Trading System, or ETS, is the world’s largest cap-and-trade program. Started in 2005 to address climate change, it covers more than 11,000 installations including power plants, as well as oil refineries and producers of steel, paper, pulp, glass, lime, brick, ceramics and cement. They must have an allowance for each ton of carbon dioxide they emit in burning fossil fuels. Those that produce more than their allowances need to buy more; those that emit less can sell their surplus. In the U.S., a proposal for a cap-and-trade program to limit greenhouse-gases by letting polluters buy and sell emission allowances on an open market passed the House last year and has stalled in the Senate. “In the U.S., there’s an intensive debate at the federal level, but there’s also an ongoing debate at the state level,” Delbeke said. “And our new ETS directive adopted in April last year allows us to link up also with sub-regional and sub- national emission trading systems and systems outside.” ‘Fresh Debate’ A “fresh debate” on offsetting mechanisms is needed in the run-up to the next round of the UN climate negotiations at the end of this year in Cancun, Mexico, he said. Under the UN Clean Development Mechanism, the world’s second-largest carbon market, offset credits are awarded when investors fund project to cut emissions in developing nations. “CDM is an offsetting mechanism that is not very popular in the U.S., and so having a common offsetting system could be of absolute importance for the future meeting of carbon markets,” Delbeke said. “We can link them formally, but if we have a common offsetting scheme they would be linked de facto already.” Delbeke also said that the EU will debate the issue of carbon taxation that could potentially be applied to sectors not covered by the ETS, such as transport or services. (By Ewa Krukowska) --Editors: Mike Anderson, Will Kennedy. To contact the reporters on this story: Ewa Krukowska in Brussels at
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March 24 (Bloomberg) -- The European Union is “very committed” to see its market linked with carbon-trading programs in other countries by 2015, a senior official at the bloc’s executive arm said.
