U.S. Senate studies Emission Trading Scheme (ETS)

Roundtable discussion with experts

The European Union launched the Emission Trading Scheme (ETS) in January 2005 as a cornerstone to meet the Kyoto emission targets. The second phase of EU-ETS is currently under development and will be launched in January 2008.

The United States Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources is studying the EU-ETS model and recently organized a roundtable discussion on the subject. The aim was to focus on lessons learned that have a bearing on the design of a CO2 trading system for the United States.

Six experts were asked two simple questions:

• What was done right in the EU-ETS?
• What was done wrong in the EU-ETS?

Those six participants were Jos Delbeke (Director DG Environment of the European Commission), Per-Otto Wold (Founding partner and CEO of Point Carbon), Edward Garth (Trading Manager Environmental Products of Shell Oil), Jean-Yves Caneill (Project Manager Electricité de France), Bruno Vanderborght (Vice President Climate Protection of Holcim Cement), and A. Denny Ellerman (Senior Lecturer Massachusetts Institute of Technology).

You can find their responses on the U.S. Senate Committee Web site.