Market Efficiency in the EU Emissions Trading Scheme: An outlook for the third trading period. Bruges European Economic Research (BEER) Papers 20/March 2011

Is the EU Emission Trading Scheme (ETS) ready for the challenge of cutting emissions by 20 %? This paper tries to provide an answer to this question by studying the efficiency of the scheme, both in the secondary and in the primary markets for allowances. On the one hand, this paper draws conclusions from the operation of the scheme so far. For this purpose, it studies a wide variety of market data using economic and econometric techniques. On the other hand, building on this evidence, this paper presents and evaluates some of the changes introduced in the scheme for the third trading period.