Carbon Purging

The European Union Emission Trading System (EU ETS) is the largest multi-national emissions trading scheme in the world, and is a major pillar of EU climate policy. The ETS currently covers more than 10,000 installations in the energy and industrial sectors which are collectively responsible for close to half of the EU's emissions of CO2 and 40% of its total greenhouse gas emissions.

Under the EU ETS, large emitters of carbon dioxide within the EU must monitor and annually report their CO2 emissions, and they are obliged every year to return an amount of emission allowances to the government that is equivalent to their CO2 emissions in that year. A market price for EUAs emerges as a result of trading. Carbon Purging buys and retires EUAs. In order to neutralize annual irregularities in CO2-emission levels that may occur due to extreme weather events (such as harsh winters or very hot summers), emission allowances for any plant operator subject to the EU ETS are given out for a sequence of several years at once. Each such sequence of years is called a Trading Period. The 1st EU ETS Trading Period expired in December 2007; it had covered all EU ETS emissions since January 2005. With its termination, the 1st phase EU allowances became invalid. Since January 2008, the 2nd Trading Period is under way which will last until December 2012. Currently, the installations get the allowances for free from the EU member states' governments. Besides receiving this initial allocation on a plant-by-plant basis, an operator may purchase EU allowances from others (installations, traders, the government.) If an installation has received more free allowances than it needs, it may sell them to anybody.