The ETS files

The European Parliament voted on the reform of the EU Emissions Trading System (ETS) on 15 February, agreeing to weak annual climate targets and massive new handouts to polluters for another decade.

Subsidies raised through the Emissions Trading System, the EU’s flagship policy to reduce climate change, could be the key to ensuring that two new coal-fired power stations are built in Greece, according to a recent report in The Guardian newspaper. Wait - what!?

The International Civil Aviation Organization is expected to agree a new climate deal at its current assembly meeting. But its promise of “carbon neutral” flying through voluntary carbon offsetting is delusive, posing new threats to the environment and communities.

A new report on carbon market reform has kicked off debate on the issue in the European Parliament. It promises new loopholes for the oil industry and other polluters.

A revised Emissions Trading Directive is like red meat for the hungry pack of lobbyists that work the corridors of Brussels’ political institutions. Even minor differences in how pollution permits are handed out can result in profits or savings of millions of euros to big polluters.

The Emissions Trading System (ETS) is the European Union’s flagship climate policy. It is intended to establish a legal limit (or “cap”) on carbon dioxide emissions (and more recently, those of other greenhouse gases) by making it expensive to pollute beyond this limit.

There is something zombie-like about the EU Emissions Trading System (ETS), the world's largest carbon market, which has consistently failed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, only to be brought back from the dead by successive “reform” proposals. The latest attempt to reincarnate the EU's flagship climate policy, proposed by the European Commission last July, would extend the scheme until at least 2030.

Every time the EU Emissions Trading System (ETS) fails to reduce emissions, the politicians and businesses who promote the scheme reach for their Samuel Beckett: “Try again, fail again, fail better.”