Sandbag, the campaigning organisation focused on emissions trading released a report during the week which claimed that:

Sandbag has today released analysis showing how Europe’s carbon caps have turned into a carbon trap….

Emissions have dropped across Europe, however, this has almost exclusively been the result of recession rather than shrewd policy. Perversely though, the current design of the ETS prevents us from capturing any environmental benefit of this downturn. Rather this carbon saving is allowed – under the ETS Directive – to be banked and saved for a rainy day. This means that the 233 million tonnes of spare permits left over from 2009 will be used to allow future emissions to take place, emissions it seems are now predetermined.

I was fascinated to read this and wanted to know more so I talked to Sandbag director and report author Bryony Worthington.

Here are the questions I asked Bryony:

  • The report says that the EU ETS carbon trading scheme could be locked at too high a cap? – 00:30
  • How are the caps set too high? How did that happen? – 00:57
  • I can trade emissions, can emissions surpluses carry over from year to year? – 01:53
  • If caps are locked in, there is no reason to stop producing carbon? – 02:26
  • What should be done to fix this and who is responsible for doing it? – 03:05
  • What can we do to influence this decision? – 03:50
  • How soon will we know the decision out of Europe? – 05:45

Sandbag are also the people who produce the fabulously useful 2009 EU emissions map of industrial greenhouse gas emissions across Europe which I have embedded below.