Carbon price drop requires decisive action
09 December 2011
Lately, headlines about the carbon market have been alarming:
“EU carbon price falls!” “CO2 prices drop!” and “Carbon price
crashes the record!” Carbon prices are the lowest since the financial crisis of
2009. For the climate, the crucial question is not, however, how many
percentage points the carbon price has changed in the last weeks. The EU
ensuring it doesn’t miss out on a cost-efficient decarbonisation trajectory for
2050 is much more important for the climate.
It does not really matter if carbon prices are at 5, 10 or 12 euros per tonne. The fact is, the EU’s carbon market does not currently have enough ambition to avoid the EU locking itself into an unsustainable energy future. . With an overabundance of permits, coming from low demand and oversupply, there is not a strong enough price signal to help deter high-carbon investments. Without more scarcity of permits the EU will slip away from an economically viable emission reduction trajectory because prices would be too low to cost-effectively achieve 80 to 95% emission cuts by 2020, as agreed by the EU leaders in 2009.
Will Barroso’s apathy sink EU’s climate action flagship?
30 May 2011
The European Commission is well aware that carbon prices within the EU Emissions Trading System will collapse as from 2013 and is failing to take appropriate actions, according to information released today by Reuters.
Due to the non-alignment of EU climate and energy policies and new economic data, Member States risk losing billions of euros in auctioning revenues which could be invested in renewables and energy-savings measures.
"The Barroso II Commission needs to step in and create more scarcity in the Emissions Trading System, or it will destroy its so called climate legacy”, says Tomas Wyns, Policy Team Coordinator at Climate Action Network (CAN) Europe.
United Nations under Pressure to denounce Human Rights Abuses in Carbon Offsetting Scheme
19 April 2011
Brussels, 18 April 2011. The United Nation’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) Executive Board has so far failed to respond to human rights abuses linked to a carbon offsetting project in Honduras. Environmental and Human Rights Groups are now demanding that the project be rejected from receiving funding under the offsetting scheme. They are also calling for an overhaul of the scheme to strip projects that violate human rights from the list of registered projects.
CAN-E submission to public consultation on carbon leakage (12.04.2010) 
