By Kate Abnett
BRUSSELS, Feb 24 (Reuters) – The European Union’s top business lobby has urged the bloc to keep free carbon permits for industries, piling pressure on officials preparing a major overhaul of the EU carbon market.
Brussels is redesigning the EU’s Emissions Trading System, its main climate tool, which forces power plants and factories to buy CO2 permits when they pollute.
The ETS has come under growing political pressure from leaders worried about Europe’s faltering competitiveness, with some governments calling for a cut to the ETS price or even a pause to the system.
A central issue in the upcoming review is whether to change the system of free CO2 permits that softens pollution costs for industries. Those permits are due to be phased out by 2034.
“The Commission should reconsider the planned phase-out of free allowances for all sectors,” industry association BusinessEurope said in a position paper published on Tuesday.
Instead, the EU should look at expanding the list of sectors eligible for free permits, it said.
BusinessEurope, whose members include national industry associations such as Germany’s BDI and Poland’s Lewiatan, also urged the EU not to make free permits conditional on companies investing in energy savings.
The demand adds to pressure on the Commission, which designed the ETS to end free permits as it rolls out a CO2 tariff on imported goods. Brussels has said keeping both systems would amount to double compensation for domestic industries, breaching World Trade Organization rules.
An internal Commission document, previously reported by Reuters, showed officials are weighing options to overhaul free permits, including making them conditional on industrial decarbonisation.
The Commission aims to propose the ETS revision in the third quarter of the year.
(Reporting by Kate Abnett. Editing by Mark Potter)
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