Cancelling Emission Rights
Offset your carbon emissions with the EU Emissions Trading System
The EU Emissions Trading System is the EU’s official instrument for climate protection. All major CO2 emitters in the EU must participate. With us, you can leverage this system to offset your carbon emissions. Together we buy emission rights away from industrial polluters and force them to reduce their carbon emissions. This is how you can reduce CO2 emissions in the entire European Union.
We are ForTomorrow, a non-profit climate protection organization from Berlin. We want to offer the greatest possible effectiveness for your carbon offsets. We are certain that cancelling EU emission rights is the best way to reliably reduce CO2 emissions in Europe.
What are the benefits of carbon offsetting through the cancellation of emission rights?
The importance of additionality
Additionality ensures that a carbon offset actually serves climate protection. Only offsetting projects that are directly funded by your donations and complement existing climate protection are working. Example: If a hydropower plant is already self-financing, but still sells climate protection certificates that you can use to offset the carbon emissions, then this is not an additional benefit for climate protection. The power plant would run even without your donation. So it’s not extracting additional CO2 from the air.
Only with your help can we buy away and cancel emission rights from industrial polluters in Europe. If you didn’t help us buy up these rights, they would end up being used by industry polluters to emit CO2. The cancellation of emission rights is therefore an additional climate protection measure.
The mandatory market
Most offset projects are part of the voluntary market, which means that there are no laws, regulations or government orders in place. EU emissions trading is a mandatory market, backed by the European Union. If you offset carbon by buying emission rights from the EU Emissions Trading System, a reduction in the amount of CO2 emissions in Europe would be guaranteed. All major CO2 emitters are forced to buy emission rights via emissions trading in order to be allowed to emit CO2. Every year, the EU reduces the number of emission rights that can be purchased. Carbon emissions must drop at the same rate. We are using this mechanism to accelerate the energy transition in Europe.
Is the EU Emissions Trading System really working?
EU emissions trading has been proven to reduce CO2 emissions. The system has been in operation since 2005 and has already cut emissions by half for coal power plants, industry facilities and flights.
The system works excellently, but it is to slow. Through EU emissions trading, Europe is to achieve climate neutrality by 2050. Far too late to contain the consequences of human-made climate change.
By buying EU emission rights away from industry and cancelling them, we can boost the effectiveness of the system. With us, you have the opportunity to offset your carbon emissions and at the same time drive the energy transition of the European economy. Each emission right we cancel equals a reduction of one tonne of CO2 emissions in the EU.
Do you have more questions about the EU Emissions Trading System? Find more information here:
Blog article about EU emissions trading — For in-depth information on EU emissions trading.
Emissions trading Q&A — Find the most commonly asked questions on the topic of EU emissions trading and the corresponding answers.
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