Brexit may mean Brexit, but Paris means negative emissions. Today, as the global agreement enters into force, governments and civil society must act in concert to deploy carbon negative technology. If governments worldwide are serious in their Paris Agreement plans...
Additional actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are being taken across the EU in sectors covered by the EU Emissions Trading System (EU ETS). These include implementing energy efficiency programmes, deploying renewables, replacing lignite and coal plants with...
Coal power generation has fallen fast. The reasons are nothing to do the EUETS. The fall in coal is a major reason that the carbon price is so low. And this means the rest of the EUETS is getting an easy ride. This threatens the integrity of the whole EUETS. We...
Increasing CO2 intensity: Data from the Cement Sustainability Initiative shows that the carbon intensity of EU cement increased from 2008 to 2014. No carbon leakage: Since 2011, the EU cement sector has vastly increased exports of cement clinker outside the EU,...
Today, the first ever global agreement on aviation and climate change was decided upon in Montreal. The impressive achievement in forging an agreement between 191 nations should not overshadow the fact that aviation emissions remain effectively uncapped. Today’s...
...and avoid the infamous Cross-Sectoral Correction Factor Each year, industries across the EU receive billions of Euros worth of free allowances from the European Commission in order to protect them from the costs of compliance with the EU carbon market. The logic...
Sandbag has written to the Polish government (in Polish) on ratification of the Paris Agreement by the European Union. Tomorrow Member States will decide whether to ratify at the extraordinary ENVI Council meeting in Brussels. Poland who was a proud leader of the...
Last week Ola Mirowicz, Sandbag’s Climate Policy Adviser, spoke at the Polish Economic Forum in Krynica about the opportunities for Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries to address the challenge of the Energiewende. The Economic Forum is a major economic and...
Today, the European Commission has released a new proposal for cutting emissions in transport, agriculture and buildings sectors by 2030, and suggests how this effort should be shared between Member States. This proposal introduces a number of dangerous loopholes that...
DG CLIMA, European Commission’s (EC) service for climate change mitigation, will publish the proposal of changes to the EU Effort Sharing Decision (ESD) around 20 July. We expect that the proposal has now entered into the ‘interservice consultation’ where it is...