Skip to Content

Carbon Trading

FERN’s aim is to move the climate debate beyond carbon trading and to support communities faced with carbon offset projects.


FERN’s analysis: The European Commission has described climate change as “one of the greatest environmental, social and economic threats facing the planet”. FERN believes that to attempt to combat such a threat with a market mechanism designed to allow emissions in one place to continue on the back of a claimed reduction in another place is foolish. Reductions need to happen everywhere, particularly in industrialised countries. And they need to happen now. We should not be spending time, money and effort putting in place the infrastructure for a new global carbon trading scheme at the expense of investment in genuine emission reductions and establishing low carbon energy and transport infrastructures. 

What FERN is doing: In 2004, FERN co-founded the Durban Group for Climate Justice a group of organisations that believe climate policy needs to move beyond carbon trading and focus on ending fossil fuel dependency. We document how carbon trading delays action to end fossil fuel dependence and thus acts as a distraction from the urgent need to drastically cut greenhouse gas emissions, especially in industrialised countries. FERN also supports organisations documenting and exposing the impact of carbon offset projects on local communities.

To learn more about this campaign: see www.fern.org/tradingcarbon

Most recent publications

NGO report busts the myths of the Emissions Trading Scheme

This press release European Parliament was launched in advance of a vote on the European Commission's proposal to backload 900 million emissions permits within the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS). This vote assumes the EU ETS can be reformed, but ahead of the vote, a new report shows that the problems of the EU ETS are systemic and unresolvable. Keeping this failed system in place would further delay real action to reduce emissions in Europe.

EU ETS myth busting: Why it can’t be reformed and shouldn’t be replicated

Given the urgent need to limit  global warming, it is vital that the European Union (EU) gives itself the best tools with which to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Since the launch of the EU's ‘cornerstone policy’ to reduce emissions — the European Union Emissions Trading System (EU ETS), emissions have risen; there is increased reliance on coal; the price of consumer energy has risen along with the profits of many industrial actors (as a direct result of the EU ETS) and millions of euros of public money have been lost in VAT fraud.

DocumentSize
Myths_internet.pdf1.23 MB

FERN launches new trilingual carbon trading blog

Not a day goes by without more evidence of failed carbon offsets, fraud and crime, and windfall profits for the industries who were meant to be penalised by putting a price on carbon. Even market actors are losing interest, and record numbers of carbon-trading desks are closing shop.

ETS reforms steal attention from measures that could actually work

FERN wrote this guest commentary for PointCarbon (www.pointcarbon.com) to highlight that the time has come to give up waiting for the "market" to deliver the structural changes needed to keep global warming below two degrees and start taking direct action.

DocumentSize
Guest commentary.pdf431.19 KB

Input to the consultation on structural options to strengthen the EU Emission Trading System

This input to the European Commission consultation on options to stregthen the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) was signed onto by 21 organisations. It raised only was concern, that the consultation excludes a fundamental, seventh option: ending the ETS by 2020 and replacing it with other regulatory climate policies. This is a serious omission that leaves this consultation incomplete as an input toward a legislative proposal. After two years of decline, the prices of emission permits and carbon credits have reached historic lows.

It is time for the EU to scrap its carbon emissions trading system

This press release accompanies a joint declaration by more than 90 organisations, networks and movements from all over the world. 'It is Time to Scrap the ETS' lists the structural flaws of the ETS and the risks of trying to fix it. The organisations supporting this declaration conclude: “It is time to stop fixating on ‘price’as a driver for change. We need to scrap the EU ETS and implement effective and fair climate policies by making the necessary transition away from fossil fuel dependency.”

DocumentSize
Scrap_ETS_Press_Release_18Feb.pdf23.92 KB

Pages