Emissions from the power industry in the European Union dropped 8% in 2014, whilst electricity consumption fell by 2.7%, according to analysis by industry group Sandbag.
The decline in energy consumption was above expectations. Sandbag has forecast that electricity consumption in the EU will fall by 10% this decade, and that the EU ETS surplus will grow to 4.5 billion by 2020. The fall in electricity consumption was despite real GDP growth of 1.3%, indicating that the “historic link between GDP and electricity consumption no longer exists in the same way,” Sandbag said.
Separately, research by Thomson Reuters’s Point Carbon unit showed that the value of the global carbon market grew by 15 percent during 2014 to 45 billion Euros (US$52 million). The increase was attributed to the higher prices in the European emissions trading scheme and increasing liquidity and prices in the North American markets.
Point Carbon expects the world’s carbon market to increase by 10 percent to 8.5 Gt while its value will increase by half to 69.5 billion Euros.