Greenhouse Gases: Reviewing the European Trade
Lessons from the EU Emissions Trading Scheme emerge after two years.
Despite assertions to the contrary, the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme is working. Industry has changed both short-term behavior and longer-term plans to reduce compliance costs—the driving down of greenhouse-gas emissions being the intended and achieved result. In this article, we review examples of the ETS affecting both planned and actual behavior. The other side of the coin is how regulatory and political uncertainty undermines this.