Campaigns

Our aim is simple - to prevent as many tonnes of emissions from entering the atmosphere as possible, as quickly as possible. We are working in a number of different ways to achieve this goal.

Most immediately we enter the carbon market on behalf of our members and buy up and cancel emissions permits, we make sure we only buy from suitable sellers and that the money we spend is spent on projects to increase energy efficiency. We also encourage companies who hold permits to cancel them rather than use them to emit. This is a hard sell in the current economic climate but the principle is an important one we will continue to promote.

But the unique part of what we do it our campaigning work to change policy. We don't believe the carbon market is yet functioning correctly and we know that changes are needed to make it work effectively to tackle climate change. Our main ask is for tougher caps to be set. We use analysis of how the EU emissions trading scheme is working on the ground to back up our demands and we seek to encourage debate about the solutions that can be implemented. Visit our European campaign page to find out more about this work.

Obviously it is not possible to stop climate change by Europe taking action on its own. We need to show genuine leadership but this global problem needs a global solution. In December of this year under the auspices of the UN a deal needs to be reached that will reverse the trend in global emissions of greenhouse gases. We believe this can be relatively easily achieved by focusing on the sector of the global economy that can do the most to cut emissions quickly - the global power sector. Go to our Global campaign pages to find out more about what we are calling on world leaders to agree.