Launched in 2005, the EU ETS is the planet's largest formal regulated emissions reduction scheme. It works on the "cap and trade" principle. The ETS operates in 30 countries (the 27 EU Member States plus Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway). The ETS is an essential instrument for reducing greenhouse gas emissions (GHG). Yet significant inefficiencies in the EU ETS exacerbate the likelihood of its redundancy. This talk explores the problems and potential of the EU ETS as well as the vicissitudes of response measures from myriad non-state actors, within and beyond the EU.

The Research College “Transformative Power of Europe” and the Environmental Policy Research Centre cordially invite you to a joint, additional Berlin Sustainability Talk.

We are glad to welcome Dr. M. K. Dorsey, whose presentation will be on “Which Way for the EU-ETS? Crisis & Opportunity in the European Union Emission Trading Scheme”.

Dr Michael K. Dorsey is an assistant professor in Dartmouth College’s Environmental Studies Program and the Director of the College’s Climate Justice Research Project. He is a co-founding board member of Islands First — a multilateral negotiating capacity building organization for small island developing states facing disproportionate threats from unfolding climate change. Since 2008, Dr. Dorsey has been an Affiliated Researcher on the Sustainability and Climate Research Team at Erasmus University’s Research Institute of Management inside the Rotterdam School of Management (RSM-ERIM, The Netherlands). He has published widely on international equity, politics of biodiversity and environmental justice.

Sibyl Steuwer (German Council for Sustainable Development) will give a comment on Dr. Dorsey´s presentation.

The talk will be held in English.

The Berlin Sustainability Talk is a monthly brown bag seminar at the Environmental Policy Research Centre (ffu). It presents a forum for discussion and exchange about ongoing research projects and recent trends in environmental policy research with scholars of other institutes, business representatives, politics, and public administrations as well as the interested public.