CEMBUREAU: competitiveness and legal predictability are key to EU carbon market

CEMBUREAU, the European cement association, said it will further reflect and analyse the European Commission’s report on the state of the European carbon market in 2012 so it can help to ensure that the cement industry can continue to plan long-term investment in Europe, within a stable, consistent and predictable legal environment.

The European Commission is taking two key steps to address a growing demand-supply imbalance in the EU emissions trading system (EU ETS). It proposes to delay the auctioning of 900m allowances in the third phase of the scheme, due to start next year as a short-term measure. In addition, it offers six options for structural measures to tackle the structural causes of the imbalance. These include: increasing the EU reduction target to 30 per cent in 2020, retiring a number of allowances in Phase 3, early revision of the annual linear reduction factor, extension of the scope of the ETS to other sectors, limit access to international credits and the introduction of discretionary price management mechanisms.

“The competitiveness of our industry, which clearly remains exposed to carbon leakage, is key in this respect” states Koen Coppenholle, CEMBUREAU’s CEO.  According to the cement association: “It is essential that any further reduction of CO₂ emissions above the targets agreed should remain conditional upon the conclusion of an international agreement between all major GHG emitting countries.  This should be undertaken with a view to establish a global crediting scheme, characterised by a comparable methodology to measure GHG emission reductions and equivalent monitoring and reduction efforts.”