Trade-offs in sulfur emission trading in Europe

How to implement emission trading is one question in the current negotiations on a new sulfur protocol in Europe. Whereas the current protocol stipulates a 30 percent uniform reduction, national emission ceilings included in the proposed new protocol imply differentiated reductions. In addition, emission and fuel standards are proposed. This paper examines the costs and environmental impacts of emission trading. Emission trading combined with regulations is a new element in the paper. Calculations using the RAINS (Regional Acidification INformation and Simulation) model suggest that overlaying emission trading on regulations not only reduces the cost savings but has beneficial impacts as well: ecosystem protection is not changed and significant decreases in environmental benefits for countries are largely avoided. Emission trading can also be used to decrease emissions and increase ecosystem protection. If combined with existing legislation, emission trading minimizes losses in expected environmental benefits for some countries, and most countries gain. However, the initial distribution of emission ceilings has to be used so that some countries are not confronted with higher costs. Trade-offs appear to exist between the use of emission trading to achieve cost savings on the one hand, and ecosystem protection and distributional equity on the other