地球的气候总是在变化，而且一直是对生活环境影响最大的。直到最近，从地质学上来说，这对人类生活产生了负面影响；改变的不只是环境，还有气候本身。有广泛观察到的影响，如景观的变化，物种的破坏和空气及水的污染。也有更多有争议的指控，人类活动对气候问题有非常大的责任，如全球变暖。如今的科学共识认为人类是最有可能在全球气温近期快速上涨的原因是大量排放在二氧化碳。有许多解决方案被提出来解决这个问题，一个最有潜力的政策工具，以市场为基础的排放交易。迄今为止，这一政策实施的最大和最复杂的版本是欧盟的排放交易计划。在其广泛的潜力，它仍然是基本上是一个实验，一个面临着许多挑战。欧盟ETS影响未来，全球倡议的潜力，它是由参与者和利益相关者使用这些挑战性的课程；要提高警惕，适应性和前瞻性的思考。本文的目的是介绍欧盟ETS，讨论它的形成和结构，评估其面临的主要挑战和提出解决前进。
The Earth's climate is always changing, and has always been the greatest influence on the living environment. It was only until very recently, geologically-speaking, that life developed the ability to push back; to change not just the environment, but climate itself. There are widely observable effects; such as changes to the landscape, species destruction and the pollution of air and water. There are also more contested charges; that human activity is responsible for wider climatic issues such as global warming. Scientific consensus now agrees that humanity is most likely the cause for recent rapid increases in global temperatures (IPCC 2007) and much of the blame is placed on the massive amount of CO2 that human civilisation pumps into the atmosphere. There are many solutions being proposed to tackle this issue; one with the most potential being the policy instrument of market-based emissions trading. The largest and most intricate version of this policy implemented to date is the European Union's Emission Trading Scheme. With all its wide-reaching potential, it is still essentially an experiment; one facing numerous challenges to its success. The EU ETS has the potential to influence future, global initiatives, and it is up to the participants and stakeholders to use these challenges as formative lessons; to be vigilant, adaptable and forward thinking. The intent of this paper is to introduce the EU ETS, discuss its formation and structure, asses its major challenges and propose solutions going forward.
The concept of emissions trading was initially introduced 43 years ago by the Canadian economist John H. Dales. His idea of "markets in pollution rights" (Dales 1968) was considered radical at the time, but is now one of the most important and widely recognised policy instruments for tackling the challenges of pollution and climate change. The EU ETS is not the first implementation of this instrument, but it is certainly the largest and most complicated incarnation to date. Its origins are interesting and certainly worth exploring.
In some ways, the EU ETS was born out failure. Without applying the lessons learnt from the mistakes of the past, it is nearly impossible to move on to succeed in the future. This is exemplified quite poetically by Nietzsche, who suggests:
Examine the lives of the best and most fruitful people and peoples and ask yourselves whether a tree that is supposed to grow to a proud height can dispense with bad weather and storms; whether misfortune and external resistance, some kinds of hatred, jealousy, stubbornness, mistrust, hardness, avarice, and violence do not belong among the favourable conditions without which any great growth even of virtue is scarcely possible. (Nietzsche 1882)
There are two major failures that led to the birth of the EU ETS. The first was the European Commission's 1992 carbon energy tax proposal. Although well-intentioned, the proposal was aggressively opposed by several Member States and by the main industry lobbies. The lesson learnt from this staunch opposition is that although emissions taxes may work on a national level, internationally-imposed taxes are quickly contested as a slippery-slope attack on sovereignty. The proposal was formally withdrawn in 1997 (Convery et al. 2008, p.7).
The second failure began in late 1997; when Vice President Al Gore, leader of the US delegation negotiating the Kyoto Protocol, successfully forced emissions trading into the negotiations. The EU negotiators strongly opposed emissions trading, fearing that the United States had introduced the policy as a means to delay nego
