Carmen Bunzl - Universidad Pontificia Comillas

Chapter 4. Case Study: Spain 214
The Grandfathering cases (B1, B2 and B4) – particularly B4, allocation entirely
based on Grandfathering – lead to fairly high reductions for Spain, which had
growth targets under the Kyoto Protocol compared to 1990 levels (+15%).
The Triptych approach leads to reductions that are somewhere in the middle
compared to the reductions resulting from the other approaches.
It has been noted before that the Marginal abatement costs results greatly
depend on the assumptions used for marginal abatement costs. For Spain, it
would lead to relatively low reductions compared to other approaches (C1 with
C3, B1 with B2 and B4, A1 with A2), especially if the approach is applied as
burden sharing within the non-ETS sector.
The least demanding approach for Spain would be a Triptych approach as
first step, used to differentiate the overall EU cap between ETS and non-ETS
sectors; and then, for burden sharing the non-ETS sector cap among Member
States, the Marginal abatement costs approach. Marginal abatement costs – as
defined in this analysis – applied in both steps would also be relatively less
stringent for Spain.
Therefore, Spain would be beneficiated if an approach based on Equal costs
was to be used in the EU burden sharing. The Triptych approach would be
Spain’s second best option. An approach based on Grandfathering, which does
not take into account national circumstances, would place an extremely heavy
burden on Spain.
However, Spain’s reduction efforts would be relatively high for all of the
approaches analyzed here. Although sometimes allowed growth targets
(compared to 1990 levels – taking therefore account of its economic growth), it
would have to reduce between 20% and 50% compared to the baseline scenario.
The Commission’s proposal of EU effort sharing uses as a base the most cost-
effective reference scenario, therefore Spain is greatly beneficiated by this.
Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingeniería ICAI Carmen Bunzl Boulet Junio 2008