Recital 24

(24) The Community will continue to take the lead in the negotiation of an ambitious international agreement on climate change that will achieve the objective of limiting global temperature increase to 2 °C and is encouraged by the progress made at the 13th Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC, and 3rd Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol, held in Bali, Indonesia from 3-14 December 2007 towards this objective. In the event that other developed countries and other major emitters of greenhouse gases do not participate in this international agreement, this could lead to an increase in greenhouse gas emissions in third countries where industry would not be subject to comparable carbon constraints (carbon leakage), and at the same time could put certain energy-intensive sectors and subsectors in the Community which are subject to international competition at an economic disadvantage. This could undermine the environmental integrity and benefit of actions by the Community. To address the risk of carbon leakage, the Community should allocate 100 % of allowances free of charge to sectors or subsectors meeting the relevant criteria. The definition of these sectors and subsectors and the measures required should be subject to reassessment to ensure that action is taken where necessary and to avoid overcompensation. For those specific sectors or subsectors where it can be duly substantiated that the risk of carbon leakage cannot be prevented otherwise, where electricity constitutes a high proportion of production costs and is produced efficiently, the action taken may take into account the electricity consumption in the production process, without changing the total quantity of allowances. The carbon leakage risk in these sectors or subsectors should be assessed, as a starting point, at a 3-digit level (NACE-3 code) or, where appropriate and where the relevant data are available, at a 4-digit level (NACE-4 code).

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Source: EUR-Lex (Cellar) · retrieved 2026-10-13 · Text as adopted (Official Journal); later amendments are not incorporated in this text.