National energy policies usually have a significant impact on the sectoral and overall CO₂ emissions of an EU Member State. Once the proposed EU emissions trading scheme (EU ETS) becomes operational, however, the CO2 performance of these policies, i.e. their effectiveness and efficiency in...

In order to cover their CO₂ emissions, power companies receive most of the required EU ETS allowances for free. In line with economic theory, these companies pass on the costs of these allowances in the price of electricity. This article analyses the implications of the EU ETS for the power...

We quantified the volume of free allowances that different national allocation plans proposed to allocate to existing and new installations, with specific reference to the power sector. Most countries continue to allocate based on historic emissions, contrary to hopes for improved allocation...

This paper presents a new sector-based framework-called the multi-sector convergence approach-for negotiating binding national GHG mitigation targets after the first budget period defined by the Kyoto Protocol (2008-2012). The major characteristics of this approach are that: (i) it is based on...