Publications
CEPS-Sandbag Joint Op-Ed – The EU should lead the green steel race… Or it could be left behind in the dust
A wave of low-carbon steel projects should be launched across the EU by 2030 but how commercially viable they are is still to be seen. According to Agora Industry, two critical factors underpin this uncertainty: a carbon price below EUR 150 per tonne of CO2...
From Niche to Mainstream: Shaping Demand for Green Steel
This report on the demand for green steel examines the impact of steel production using low-carbon technologies further down the value chain. Key Takeaways Due to weak carbon prices and high electricity costs, producing green steel incurs in a premium, which...
Joint letter calling for separate emissions reductions and permanent CDR targets in EU 2040 climate framework
Sandbag co-signed an open letter sent to the European Commission by 114 leading academics, businesses, civil society organisations and research institutions urging the EU to set explicit and separate targets for greenhouse gas emissions reductions, land-based...
Update of the EU ETS free allocation rules: Polluting for free during a climate crisis
In this joint op-ed, first featured in Carbon Pulse, Sandbag policy officer Aymeric Amand and Carbon Market Watch policy expert Lidia Tamellini examine the revision of the Free Allocation Regulation. The EU Emissions Trading System (ETS) is one of the core EU...
European Commission lets recycled steel down in regulation proposal
Sandbag and 12 other organisations – representing important environmental NGOs, think tanks and the European recycling industry – have co-signed a letter addressed to Members of the European Parliament and Members of Coreper 1 in response to the European...
Flat Steel in the Free Allocation Regulation
Our fact sheet explains why tackling emissions from the European steel sector is so important and why ferrous scrap has a role to play to decarbonise the steel industry.Following the revision of the EU Emissions Trading System (ETS) Directive in April 2023, the...
The European Hydrogen Bank Confirms a Blind Support Approach
The Commission has recently published the Terms & Conditions (T&C) for the pilot auction of the European Hydrogen Bank (EHB) taking place on the 23rd of November 2023, in an attempt to meet the ambitious target set in the REPowerEU plan of 10Mt domestically...
Feedback on the Draft of the CBAM Implementing Regulation
We welcome the Commission's draft of the CBAM implementing regulation concerning the reporting obligations and provisional methodology for calculating embedded emissions in CBAM goods. However, we have concerns regarding the accounting and monitoring rules applied...
Supply and Demand in the EU ETS: Powering Through the Cap
The reform of the EU’s carbon market and the free allocation regulation is now voted on. The deal was wrapped in December 2022 and was barely different from what the Commission had proposed nearly two years ago and which we had analysed in September 2021. If the...
Fixing the Innovation Fixation
The EU’s Innovation Fund, launched in 2018, is the EU’s programme for funding cutting-edge low-carbon technologies. To be eligible, projects must be, according to the European Commission, highly innovative, cost-efficient, mature, scalable, and have a significant emission reduction potential. The Innovation Fund is financed using revenues from the Emissions Trading System (ETS), under which certain sectors have to buy emission permits (allowances) in order to be allowed to pollute.
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