EU considering moves to bring transport emissions into ETS
Sat 25 October 2014
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The European Union is considering bringing road transport emissions into the Emissions Trading System (ETS) in a move that critics say could undermine so far largely successful attempts to cut emissions from the road transport sector.
The EU's Emissions Trading System (ETS), key to efforts to reduce emissions, has so far excluded road transport. It has focused on curbing pollution from heavy industry and the power sector by forcing more than 12,000 power plants, factories and airlines to surrender an allowance for every tonne of CO2 emitted under a gradually decreasing emission cap.
However a draft of the EU's 2030 climate and energy package, reported by Reuters, says individual member states can include road transport in the EU ETS if they choose.
It also calls on the executive European Commission to "further develop instruments and measures for a comprehensive and technology neutral approach for the promotion of emissions reduction and energy efficiency in transport".
“We want that flexibility,” said Martin Lidegaard, the foreign minister of Denmark, which has championed the proposal. “All countries of Europe could benefit from this flexible approach. That’s why we’re pressing for it as a solution.”
A new report by Cambridge Econometrics backs the concerns of NGOs who oppose the proposals. It finds that it would take a carbon price of €271 between 2020-2030 to achieve the same fuel economy standards as with a legally-binding target such as the 2021 one. The carbon price is currently around €6 a tonne.
Without the 2021 target for new cars, the ETS alone would deliver a mere 1% efficiency improvement by 2030, it says. “This would be insufficient for the road transport sector to contribute proportionately to the EU’s stated goals for decarbonisation.”
A spokesman for the Brussels-based NGO, Transport and Environment, (reported by The Guardian) said: “The effect of this proposal would be to undermine progress in improving the efficiency of vehicles and cutting transport emissions.
“It would be more expensive for drivers, and it would mean that transport doesn’t have to substantially reduce its emissions, just buy allowances from other sectors as that will be the cheaper way of offsetting their emissions. The net effect would be to put back the point at which transport has to bring down its emissions and decarbonise.”
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