Trading Up: Reforming the European Union's Emissions Trading Scheme

Article

This report considers arguments for expanding the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme so that it includes not only additional gases and activities in energy-intensive industries, but also the aviation and maritime industries, and road transport.

The European Union Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) is Europe's most important initiative for curbing greenhouse gas emissions and averting dangerous climate change. Human-induced climate change, caused by emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases (GHG), mainly from burning fossil fuels and deforestation, is a serious long-term global environmental threat to human and ecological welfare (Baer 2006). To avoid dangerous climate change, global greenhouse gas emissions must be reduced very significantly.

This report considers arguments for expanding the EU ETS so that it includes not only additional gases and activities in energy-intensive industries, but also the aviation and maritime industries, and road transport.

Related items

  1. A photo of a family walking along a residential street: a dad holds a toddler in his arms with a son and daughter on either side of him

    The first 100 days: A blueprint for renewal

    The choices that the new prime minister, Andy Burnham, makes in the first 100 days must demonstrate that he is on the side of ordinary people. 
  2. Small tent on the pavement of the city street in London, UK, with a homeless person sleeping inside

    Home truths: Housing-led approaches to homelessness

    Nationally, there is a lack of political urgency in reducing homelessness. 
  3. People walking in Oxford street, London

    The democratic citizen: Renewing citizenship and the public domain

    Britain’s debate about ‘citizenship’ has narrowed to a question of the boundaries of our national community.