It’s a major year of reform for many aspects of the EU ETS, and aviation is no exception. The European Commission will soon decide how its key climate policy will interact with international attempts to tackle greenhouse gas emissions from air travel. As the public...
As the EU aims for climate neutrality by 2050, the aviation sector is lagging far behind in terms of climate action. Greenhouse gas emissions from aviation are increasing rapidly, and the sector receives many tax exemptions and state subsidies. Within Europe, the main...
Last week Ola Mirowicz, Sandbag’s Climate Policy Adviser, spoke at the Polish Economic Forum in Krynica about the opportunities for Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries to address the challenge of the Energiewende. The Economic Forum is a major economic and...
As pressure mounts on leaders to reach a new global climate change agreement this December, European policymakers have begun the process of constructing laws that will enforce Europe’s emissions cuts out to 2030. In July, the European Commission released a first...
(Press release: Thursday 30 May) New official greenhouse gas emissions data shows that Europe had already achieved its 2020 climate target back in 2011, just three years after the target had initially been set, according to climate change think tank Sandbag. In 2008,...
**This morning Sandbag presented at the Westminster Energy and Environment and Transport Forum Keynote Seminar: Aviation in the 21st Century. The following is a transcript of our presentation. ** Sandbag is a relative newcomer to the Climate Change campaigning space,...
Today the European Commission voted to ban industrial gas offset credits from HFC and N20 destruction projects from the next phase of the EU Emissions Trading Scheme, beginning in 2013. That's a big deal for two reasons: Willingness to fix the problem Firstly it...
As Environment Ministers meet in Luxembourg today the issue of whether the EU should take on more challenging climate targets, moving from a 20% to 30% emissions reductions by 2020, is firmly on the agenda. The EU has already legally capped half of its carbon dioxide...
Commissioner Connie Hedegaard stated on the 25th August 2010 that she has asked her department “to prepare a proposal for a measure to introduce further quality restrictions on the use of credits from industrial gas projects in the post-2012 EU ETS.” This is the...
European companies, whilst claiming tougher emissions targets would be ‘impossible to meet’ [1] and are damaging their competitiveness, are making extensive use of offsetting to meet their targets and even using it to directly subsidising their international...