On the 9th of November, we have answered to the EU Commission’s consultations on the revisions of the EU Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) and the Effort Sharing Regulation (ESR).
In our feedback on the proposals published in July, we welcomed the introduction of a carbon price in the sectors that are currently not covered by emissions trading, notably the building sector, provided that such a scheme is properly implemented, reliable, while avoiding heavy additional administrative burden.
We thus notably reminded that the priority must be to ensure a coherent carbon price across different sectors, to allow for a fair “burden sharing” and a real level playing field within the heating and cooling sector, between individual and district solutions for buildings.
We also emphasized that maintaining the building sector under the Effort Sharing Regulation (ESR) will help guarantee that the carbon price mechanism and the overall ETS review are effective and conducive to actual CO2 emission reduction in this sector. The ESR is indeed essential so that Member States maintain committed national climate policies and thus ambitious energy efficiency measures, and carbon pricing must be accompanied by the right regulatory tools.
On the Social Climate Fund, we reminded the need to give sufficient financial resources to this tool, which is key to ensure that the introduction of carbon price for buildings does not penalise most vulnerable households. We also emphasized that the SCF should explicitely support energy management solutions such as Energy Performance Contracts, as well as DHC systems.