Strategic spending: how the EU Emissions Trading System can fund fair climate action
Climate march in Brussels, September 2019
According to EU Member States’ reporting, of the €13.9 billion total ETS revenues in 2018, one-third - €4.6 billion - was not spent on climate actions like insulating homes or installing renewable energy. What’s more, emissions allowances worth €11 billion were given out to polluters for free. This makes almost €16 billion of missed money for climate action last year.
For an effective ETS for the climate, WWF makes six recommendations:
- Improve Member State reporting on how they spend their revenues
- Agree that Member States must spend 100% of revenues on climate action, and ensure climate spending is additional to state climate spending
- End free allocation of allowances
- Exclude fossil fuel investment from ETS revenue spending
- Remove excess ETS allowances from the market for good, and lower the cap
- Introduce sustainability and climate proofing rules to ETS climate spending
See WWF's analysis (full report)
See WWF’s asks on the Just Transition fund
Nb: Data on ETS revenue use sourced from The European Environment Agency's EIONET Central Data Repository and EU Emissions Trading System (ETS) data viewer
Climate march in Brussels, September 2019
An EU ETS for the climate: the six steps
EU ETS revenues spent on climate per year in EU (2016-2018)
EU ETS revenues spent on climate in EU Member States (2018)
EU ETS revenues and foregone revenue for 2018
