Study On The Multi-level Governance In EU Emission Trading Scheme

Since the endorsement of the “Tyoto Protocol”, the European Union hadestablished the European Union Emission Trading Scheme (EU ETS) to reduce theemission for the realization of the goal committed under the protocol. The EU ETSrefers to the methods putting emissions on the market which makes it possible to thoseemitters who have extra emission allowances to trade with those cannot make the end oftheir commitment, thus cut the cost for emission reduction. The government set a totalallowances, each emitter can trade these allowances on the market as they need. Thiskind of mechanism can make the whole society to reduce emissions with minimum cost.At present, the EU ETS has ended its first phase (2005-2007) and the second phase(2008-2012), while the third phase (2013-2020) is under its way. Both the openstructure and the emission allowances as the main contents, the EU ETS has itsachievements and disadvantages coexisted.Overall, although tried to evade the disadvantages appeared during the first phasewhich is the over-settled cap and the going-down EUAs in the later period of the firstphase, similar situation show itself again during the second phase due to unexpectedfactor such as economy crises. Though many of the causes to the disadvantages of theEU ETS have been discussed, most of them from the perspective of market economy, itturned out that so many factors have impacts on the price of EUAs. It’s hard to tellwhich one exactly caused the disadvantage let alone to propose an efficiency program toimprove it.This article used the Multi-level Governance theory as the framework structuralanalyzing the EU ETS, probing into the triangle structure of supranational level, national and sub-national level in the multi-level of the EU ETS and thus setting up apattern for this triangle. From the vertical and horizontal dimension, this article lookinginto the factors which influence the policy-making and implementation process; fromthe perspective of governance to explore the real reason why the disadvantage exists inthis multi-level governance in EU ETS. On the basis of the former discussion, thisarticle proposes some proper strategies to optimize this pattern of governance. Theconclusion and the discussion can be referred to EU and other countries and regionswhich already established or have the intention to establish a similar emission tradingsystem.This article can be divided into five parts: the first part gave a review to thedevelopment of the theory of multi-level governance and its two classic patterns; thesecond part pointed out the pattern of the EU ETS, and gave a interactional patternamong each level of the EU ETS through its policy-making and implementation process;the third part looked into the function, disadvantage and the cause; the fourth part gavesome propositions to optimize the EU ETS; the last part concluded the whole article andpresented the significance of analyzing the multi-level governance of EU ETS forChina.