Pollute and Profit

2nd May 2007
By Kevin Smith

With the second phase of the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) due to start in 2008, at some point soon Brussels will have to admit that the scheme isn’t working. Carbon emissions are not going down, industries are not switching to clean energy technology and, so far, the scheme’s guiding principle seem to have been ‘polluter profits’ rather than ‘polluter pays’.

The lack of discernible results to date lead to the conclusion that the ETS has been …