Chinese and Korean eyes focused on European EU ETS

Some steps forward by civil aviation and the international maritime industry.

The many unknowns about US climate policy, as a result of the US presidential election, are carrying the EU at the center of the international fight against climate change.

The EU ETS Compliance Conference, held on the 8th and 9th November in Brussels, was the opportunity to take stock of the level of implementation of the scheme and future prospects.

Jos Delbeke, General Director of DG Climate Action has placed urgent attention on the operational level: “the success of Marakkech is based on three things: implementation, implementation, implementation”.

The MRV system (Measuring, Reporting and Verification) represents the backbone of EU ETS and it is seen with raising attention abroad, especially for the aspects of third party verification and accreditation, at the point that it is now called MRVA. In Italy accreditation is managed by Accredia, which operates within the multilateral agreement of the UE accreditation bodies (EA-MLA).

The EU has supported the creation of a first ETS experience in South Korea (2015-2017) and the development of a pilot phase in China, with the involvement of about 10.000 organisations.

Still small numbers for the Asian giant, but already comparable to those of the current European system.

The EU ETS accounts, in fact, the participation of 10.944 plants, of which more than half, 5.700, are small emitters (<25.000 tons of CO2). Aircraft operators are about 500, also in this case with a predominance of small emitters,

The wide presence of small emitters explains the reason why one of the main messages emerging from the conference is the necessity of simplification. That cannot clearly be a disadvantage for the reliability of the whole system: for this reason the challenge will not definitely be banal.

It is interesting to observe the movements at the international level on the front of civil aviation and maritime sector.

The ICAO, for the first, has recently approved the “CORSIA” scheme (Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation) in order to manage all the emission from aviation from 2020. The scheme provides a pilot phase (2021-23), a phase of methodology consolidation (2024-26) and one of implementation (2027-35). The goal is a sort of stabilisation of the emission compared to the 2020 values, that will be taken as a reference point in time. CORSIA is an answer to the ETS scheme developed by UE for aircraft operators, though it is considered of low ambition level. For this reason it is not clear if EU ETS for aviation will be withdrawn or maintained in the future.

Some news also from the maritime sector, where last week in London IMO decided to develop an international system of MRV by sectors, as an answer to the EU Regulation 757/2015, addressed to all ships with a tonnage greater than 5.000 tons.

In this case the situation is even more complex because IMO has postponed to the next spring the decision on the operational aspects of the scheme, just on the eve of the European scheme, with the first deadline on August 2017.

Again in this case it is difficult to predict whether the international scheme will live in parallel with the European one, or if there will be a convergence towards a single instrument.

Regardless of the final choice, it is certain that ships and aircrafts in transit in European ports and airports will be called to report their own CO2 emissions.

Regardless of who has just been elected President of the USA.