"The European Parliament today voted against repairing the collapsing carbon market", said Rémi Gruet, Senior Climate Advisor of the European Wind Energy Association (EWEA) in Brussels. "MEPs have voted against the polluter pays principle and putting a market-oriented price on carbon emissions".
 
"This makes the ETS irrelevant in Europe's bid to reduce the use of fossil fuels. The carbon price will continue having no impact on investment decisions in the power sector" Gruet added.
 
EWEA backed the plan to delay auctions for additional emissions allowances ("backloading"), because over allocation of allowances, and the economic crisis, led to a significant surplus of free allowances to heavy industry. Combined with a large influx of credits from international projects, the price crashed. 
 
Given the failure of the European Parliament to support an effective carbon price, EWEA urges the EU to urgently negotiate a way forward on backloading and for the European Commission to propose a long-term solution to create an effective carbon market. 

Read EWEA's position paper
Fixing the ETS - an infographic

For more information contact:
Peter Sennekamp, EWEA
peter.sennekamp@ewea.org
+32 2 213 18 33