导语

欧盟一直在积极地推行碳交易，但效果并不理想。免费配额过度分配，再加上经济放缓，导致碳排放价格下降，使得公司没有减排的压力和动力。在人们对碳交易的信心逐渐丧失的时候，中国启动了全国排放交易体系，待体系建立完成，将在体量上将超过欧盟。目前全球已有42个国家开放碳交易，这些新加入的潜在交易伙伴为欧盟排放交易体系带来新的生机。

Just a few years ago, many thought the European Union’s Emissions Trading Scheme was finished.

With a deflated price of carbon, and the lack of international schemes to partner with, many in Europe were questioning whether setting up the scheme had been a mistake.

Europeans, in fact, had always been skeptical about whether market mechanisms were the best way to fight climate change. It was the Americans who pushed the idea in the late 1990s while the Kyoto Protocol was being negotiated.

The idea was that capitalism can solve the climate change problem much more efficiently than governments ever could. Companies are given a certain amount of free allowances to emit carbon, and anything beyond that they must purchase from the government or from other companies. There is therefor an incentive to emit less than your free allowances allow, because you can sell the remainder and make a profit. It was a very American invention.

Even after the new Republican administration in the White House refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol in 2001, assurances were made that the US would still be moving ahead with carbon trading. In 2008, as the European Union was preparing to move from their ETS pilot phase to full trading, it was coordinating with people in the US Congress with the expectation that a similar scheme was on its way in Washington. In that year’s US presidential election, both Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain were promising to start a carbon cap-and-trade system in America.

But it didn’t work out that way. In the intensely partisan environment that followed that election, Republicans in congress rejected Obama’s half-hearted attempt to create a US ETS in 2010. All plans for a US cap and trade system were dropped. The EU was left hanging on its own, stuck with a market mechanism that it was never enthusiastic about. And it was a system with significant problems.

An over-allocation of free allowances, combined with an economic slowdown, drove the price of carbon down. The price for purchasing an allowance to emit carbon fell to around seven euros per ton, far below the thirty euros per ton envisioned. Companies had little incentive to reduce their emissions, which was the point of the whole scheme. Emission credits were too cheap to buy.

Hope from China

Other countries could see what was happening to the EU’s system, and it didn’t make them want to adopt their own versions. South Korea and Australia were two of the few that chose to make the leap, but the latter shut theirs down in 2014. By 2015, when it came time to prepare the EU’s system for the next trading period, after 2020, there were more than a few voices saying perhaps the EU should throw in the towel and consider a different policy to be its main tool for fighting climate change.

Many of those ETS-sceptical voices were environmentalists, who never trusted the system. But big energy-intensive industries and oil companies urged the EU to stay the course. The environmentalists said the big companies loved the ETS because it allowed them to skate by without much financial obligation. But the companies said they wanted a healthy system with a higher price around 30 euros per ton. And they knew that the alternative, a carbon tax or caps, was not desirable for them.

The support for the system from European companies may not have been enough to save the system, were it not for the political support from carbon trading that has materialized around the world over the past two years - most importantly from Beijing.

This month China launched a national emissions trading system, uniting the handful of regional pilot schemes it has been conducting. It will initially only cover the power sector, but it will expand over time to eight sectors. The power sector is the source of almost half of China’s emissions. This means that the Chinese system will already be larger than the entire EU ETS.

China’s announcement followed another emissions trading declaration during the One Planet Summit in Paris this month. Leaders from several countries across the Americas — including Canada, Colombia, Chile and Mexico, as well as the US states of California and Washington - launched the Carbon Pricing in the Americas cooperative framework, with an eye to eventually linking their emissions trading schemes.

Suddenly, the EU’s pioneering system has found itself with potential partners to its East and West. There are now 42 national and 25 sub-national jurisdictions putting a price on carbon emissions across the world, and eight of them were launched since last year. For the first time, it looks like a ‘Global Coalition for Carbon Pricing’, which was called for at the 2015 Paris summit by former French President Francois Hollande, is a real possibility.

Emissions trading revived

In Brussels, people are reading all of this as a rebuke to US President Donald Trump’s announcement that he intends to pull the US out of the Paris climate agreement in 2020. Frustrations with the US non-cooperation on climate were boiling for many years before Trump’s June announcement, with many resentful that Obama didn’t spend more political capital on his attempt for a climate package (instead expending that energy on health care). People in the climate realm felt let down by Obama, and attacked by Trump. But with the launch of these new schemes in Asia and the Americas, they are keen to cut Washington out of the equation.

This was clear in the reaction of Miguel Arias Cañete, the head of EU climate policy, to the Chinese announcement. "As the US government turns its back on the fight against climate change, China, the EU and many others are forging ahead with strong climate policies and measures,” he said. “With both the EU and China committed to emissions trading, two major international players are championing carbon markets as a key policy tool to curb emissions and put a price on carbon.”

All of this will give the EU ETS a new lease on life. The European Parliament and EU governments have just agreed a reform of the system which is designed to raise the price of carbon by creating a reserve of allowances for when the market gets saturated. It has also changed the way free allowances are given out, to avoid a glut in the future. Market analysts are confident that the reforms can get the system to good health within the next few years.

Now that the future is looking rosier for carbon trading, the EU is already eyeing new link-ups. After several years of negotiations, it has finally struck an agreement with Switzerland to link that that country’s carbon market. They hope that this is the first of many link-ups to come.

It remains to be seen how effective a global system of emissions trading can be without the participation of the US federal government. After all, it was an American idea to begin with, and it seems strange for global trading to go forward while bypassing the 'heart of capitalism'. But if more US states jump on the carbon trading bandwagon, it may be enough to overcome inaction in Washington. Anyone who bet against carbon trading a few years ago is likely to be disappointed.

（Dave Keating）