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Climate-conscious consumers and the buy, bank, burn program

Manipulation of European Union emission trading systems (ETS) by the buy, bank, burn program compensates unregulated emissions while regulated sectors carry a large part of the burden. This distorts the balance between regulated firms and non-regulated projects, so parties outside the EU ETS can be virtuous at the cost of others.

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References

  1. The EU Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) (European Comission, 2016); https://ec.europa.eu/clima/sites/clima/files/factsheet_ets_en.pdf

  2. Erbach, G. Post-2020 reform of the EU Emissions Trading System (European Parliamentary Research Service, 2017).

  3. Gerlagh, R. & Heijmans, R. J. R. K. Regulating Stock Externalities CESifo Working Paper No. 7383 (CESifo, 2018).

  4. Perino, G. Nat. Clim. Change 8, 262–264 (2018).

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank A. Callahan-Brandt for textual corrections. R.G. thanks the Research Council of Norway for financial support.

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Correspondence to Roweno J. R. K. Heijmans.

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Reyer Gerlagh is a member of the Advisory Council (RVA) of Carbonkiller, the Dutch allowance burning program.

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Journal peer review information: Nature Climate Change thanks Grischa Perino and other anonymous reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Gerlagh, R., Heijmans, R.J.R.K. Climate-conscious consumers and the buy, bank, burn program. Nat. Clim. Chang. 9, 431–433 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-019-0482-0

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