“Most of those credits came to Europe and were about to kill the ETS market,” he added. “It dampened the prices, and so along with a market stability reserve, we designed a policy to close the door to all credits coming from the CDM.”
Yet times have changed, Delbeke insisted. A new global framework regulating credits under the Paris climate accord was finalized in November with the EU’s support. But the bloc has also “learned its lesson” not to accept any and all projects included in an international system, and should instead set its own standards, he said.
Delbeke also said there are alternatives to allowing credits within the carbon market, such as using them to offset emissions the ETS doesn’t cover: “Integrating them into the ETS is one option, but there are also other options.”
The idea of using credits to meet part of the EU’s 2040 target has drawn fierce criticism from green NGOs and the bloc’s own scientific advisory board on climate change, which warned that foreign credits risk undermining climate efforts and threaten the ETS price.
The European Parliament’s in-house think tank also warned on Thursday that “if international credits were readmitted, these concerns would remain today.”
But Delbeke thinks the EU needs to be more flexible about how it can reach its targets amid economic difficulties, global trade tensions, the war in Ukraine and Donald Trump’s return to the White House.
“If we are grown up in the discussion on carbon credits, being very restrictive on the quantity, very restrictive on the quality, it helps us to realize the targets that we are setting for ourselves in a world that is completely different from when we adopted the targets,” he said.
“The [EU’s] climate law was before the invasion of Ukraine, before we had Mr. Trump in office and before his tariff war. We now want more industry in Europe, we want more on defense, that’s going to increase emissions,” he added. “So the world is looking very different today and I think the targets that were agreed then may turn out to be more expensive than anticipated at the time.”
