On EU Effort Sharing Decision On Greenhouse Gas

In order to fulfill its carbon emission reduction target, EU initiated the approach of allocating reduction targets within a district such as EU. In the aspect of policy and law, EU's a major initiative is to issue the Decision No 406/2009/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 23 April 2009 on the effort of Member States to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions to meet the Community's greenhouse gas emission reduction commitments up to 2020 (Effort Sharing Decision) in 2009. As a type of "top-down" and legally binding to a certain extent mechanism for EU's unified emission reduction, Effort Sharing Decision has a high coordination, and its overall goal, phased targets, time schedule, rule mechanism, strict progress reports, verification and enforcement mechanisms are generally accepted and pursued. Since the non-emission-trading sector covered by the Effort Sharing Decision is wider than the EU Emissions Trading System, the success of the Effort Sharing Decision is closely related to whether EU could fulfill it reduction target and achieve its reduction promise. And it also has demonstration significance for other countries and districts.In view of the above-mentioned cognition, The paper chooses the Effort Sharing Decision as the research object, comprehensively and systematically analyzes and expounds its legislative background and legislative principles, and elaborate & review its implementation results in various countries and sectors. Based on the above research, the paper demonstrates the wide applicability and great significance, meanwhile, the paper also indicates the shortcomings of the Effort Sharing Decision and put forward optimization ideas and advice correspondingly, and concludes its reference significance for China's future practice in district allocation for emission reduction targets.The paper is divided into seven chapters. The foreword focuses on the thesis background and significance of the topic, and a brief literature review on the domestic and overseas related research status and results. After that, the frame of research work is regulated through carding the paper's research ideas and settling the paper's frame structure.Chapter I introduces the legislative background of the Effort Sharing Decision, with the emphasis on the legislative background, process and operation effect of its precedents--- The Triptych Approach and the Council Decision 2002/358/EC (Burden Sharing Decision). Consequently, the legislative process of the Effort Sharing Decision is elaborated from two aspects --- international background and EU background, and the reason why EU choosed the fourth allocation method (setting different reduction targets for EU member states based on their per capita GDP) is analyzed. Aiming to highlight the advantages and disadvantages of the Burden Sharing Decision and the Effort Sharing Decision, a brief comparative study on these two documents is carried out in Chapter 1. In order to keep the research content updated to the newest development, Chapter 1 also introduces the latest developments and changes of the international and EU situations after the issue of the Effort Sharing Decision, and especially discusses the Paris Agreement's possible influence on the Effort Sharing Decision.Chapter II focuses on the legal framework and content of the the Effort Sharing Decision. The paper points out that the Effort Sharing Decision is not only a single legal document, but a comprehensive legal framework consisting of several legal documents. The core of this legal framework is the Decision No 406/2009/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 23 April 2009 (Effort Sharing Decision), its supporting and matched legal documents include Registry Regulation 389/2013, Monitoring and Repporting Regulation 525/2013, Decisionon the Efort of Member states 162/2013 and so on. The main contents of the Effort Sharing Decision including its foreword, text and three annexes are briefly introduced in this chapter. The Effort Sharing Decision adopts a top-down approach to allocate the emission reduction target among the EU state members, and various countries have to undertake different efforts'according to their practical capacity and per capita GDP. In addition, the three main regultory mechanisms in the Effort Sharing Decision, an Annual Emission Allocation Unit (AEAu), flexibility mechanism and compliance mechanism are elaborated in this chapter.Chapter III discusses the Effort Sharing Decision's status under the EU climate change legal framework. Although the Effort Sharing Decision and the Directive 2003/87/EC on ETS could be regarded as the two most important legal documents in the field of emission reduction in EU, its Legal hierarchy and legal effect is still fairly low. In order to explore the Effort Sharing Decision's influence on the domestic policies and legislation of EU state members, The paper studies the connection between the state members'domestic climate change legislation and their compliance obligation, the consequence caused by the state members'excessive reliance on the flexibility mechanism, and the Effort Sharing Decision's restriction on state members' policy-making. There exist several relationships between the Effort Sharing Decision and other related EU policies and laws, such as the Effort Sharing Decision's relevance to EU ETS, LULUCF (Land use, land-use change and forestry), Kyoto Protocol and EU 2020 Climate and Energy Package.Chapter IV carries out a theoretical analysis on the Effort Sharing Decision. The principle of equity, the common but differentiated responsibilities principle, the right to development principle and the principle of subsidiarity & t proportionality have been demonstrated from the context of the Effort Sharing Decision. Hence, the theoretical legitimacy of the Effort Sharing Decision is consolidated.Chapter V concentrates its study on the Effort Sharing Decision's implementation situation and effect. After a Description on the Effort Sharing Decision's action plan and implementation framework, this chapter undertakes a comprehensive analysis and research on how EU state members are implementing the Decision through subsequent policies, regulations and measures. This analysis is carried out from two aspects, one is the implementation situation and effect of the Decision in different sectors, the other one is the implementation situation and effect of the Decision in different countries. It concludes that in most countries and sectors (including transportation, building, industry and agriculture), the implementation of the Decision has greatly improved the emission reduction and energy saving of EU. In the meantime, the paper also enumerates the shortcomings emerging from the implementation. In the aspect of the Decision in different countries, the paper lists and classifies the reasons why Austria and other five countries will probably fail to achieve the reduction target, and points out the main reason is that the national government does not attach enough importance to this issue. In the aspect of the Decision in different sectors transportation, building, industry and agriculture, the main difficulties to achieve emission reduction and energy saving are indicated.Chapter VI firstly summarizes the significance of the Decision in the following three aspects, namely, it embodies EU's positive altitude in emission reduction, promotes the centralization and integration of EU's climate & energy policy, remedies EU's demerit in its regulation on greenhouse gases reduction, and contributes to the fulfillment of EU's energy-saving goal. After that, this chapter discusses the weak points in the Decision's context and shortcomings emerging from its implementation. The paper points out that the main problems of the Decision lies in its inefficient implementation, too low reduction target, defective flexibility mechanism and so on. Based on this argument, the paper puts forward several opinions and suggestions in the mechanism design, capacity building, target setting and so on. For example, upgrading the legal hierarchy of the Decision, improving the flexibility, establishing the project-based mechanism and improving the auditing mechanism all can contribute to the perfection of the Decision.Chapter VII firstly discusses the Decision's scope of application, including its application in the international climate change negotiation, regional organization's climate change negotiation and domestic level. The foothold of the both the Chapter and the Paper is, based on the lessons learned from the shortcomings and experiences of the Decision, when allocating the emission reduction targets among its provinces, China should emphatically resolved several main problems including highlighting the Regional differences, reasonably selecting the key sectors, enhance the Operability of the allocation plan and so on.