26. European Emissions Trading Scheme

Among the first such systems for tradeable pollution rights was the Clean Air Act adopted by the Congress of the United States of America in the 1970’s.

In the Renewable Energy Directive (Directive 2009/28/EC) the European Parliament and the European Council explicitly expressed exactly this desire. Energy prices should “reflect external costs of energy production and consumption, including, as appropriate, environmental, social and healthcare costs” [2].

Besides carbon dioxide (CO₂) also methane (CH₄), nitrous oxide (N₂O), hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), perfluorocarbons (PFCs) and sulphur hexafluoride (SF₆) were covered. Yet, their effect on global warming was converted into CO₂ equivalents.

Under certain circumstances the operator may propose an individual approach.

Also emissions from other processes are covered by the EU-ETS.

These are completeness, consistency, transparency, trueness, cost effectiveness, faithfulness and improvement of performance in monitoring and reporting emissions [9].

The European Economic Area consists of all EU-28 countries, Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein.

However, an increase of ca. 116,000 t CO₂ was necessary due to Croatia joining the EU-ETS.

The unit “tonne-kilometre” is taken verbatim from the EU legislation and is used to compare transport performance by multiplying the payload transported (in metric tons) by the transport distance (in kilometres).

However, the use of the Small Emitters Tool only is not sufficient to waive verification.

If the reserve is not fully retrieved, the remaining allowances will be auctioned as well.

Sum of the mass of freight, mail, passengers and checked baggage expressed in tonnes t.

Represented by the Great Circle Distance plus 95 km.

The Union Register is the central registry operated by the European Commission. It features separate national domains in which the member states administer the accounts of ETS participants.

Starting value, adjusted to inflation.

In similar cases (e.g. when feeding biomethane into a closed natural gas grid) a “book and claim”-solution is applied and recognized by the EU authorities. For each MWh of biomethane, a tradeable guarantee of origin (GoO) is issued separating the bio-property from the biomethane. The biomethane is then regarded as conventional natural gas. By redemption of a GoO at another place and time an equivalent amount of natural gas can (virtually) be declared biomethane, regardless of its true origin. In principle, this “book and claim”-solution can also be used for biokerosene in the aviation fuel supply system. Biokerosene – as any other aviation fuel – is exempted from excise tax, i.e. the European tax authorities monitor all deliveries in realtime with the help of the Excise Movement and Control System (EMCS). Therefore the aviation fuel supply chain can also be regarded as closed and thus a protection against fraud is given [30].

Generally, a fuel is considered as biomass, if the share of non-biomass in the respective fuel is less than 3 % [9].

It administers i.a. the approvals of the various certification systems, participants of the certification systems, certification authorities and their recognitions, operators as well as inspection an audit reports.

From the PoS/pPoS the greenhouse gas saving potential can be derived [34].