Environment is a growing cause of concern for the world today.  All across the globe man’s practices are depriving future generations of a healthy and pollution free world.  Although initiatives like a tree a person and reusing etc are wonderful, in order to serve the purpose its cause itself needs to be regulated and drastic solutions on a much larger scale need to be implemented. Emissions trading could be just the answer.

Emissions trading, as it is known by European Union is the trading of emissions between the government and industries so that the overall emission does not exceed a pre set limit. In the US it is known as the cap and trade policy and has several programs active at present.  According to the program, a limit is set on the amount of emissions a given plant/factory can emit. The limit is known as credits. If the company emits below this level then it can bank on the credits for the future when it may emit more. Or they can trade their credits with other producers which are falling short of credits. In this way the overall upper limit is maintained and the industries which are the biggest pollutants can be brought in to ensure a sustainable development.

Although this method does not eliminate the source of pollution, it does reduce it drastically which is the only possible effective solution and should be implemented across the globe, since closing down well established industries or coming up with hundred percent eco-friendly processes does not seem to be coming any sooner.

The writer of the post is Gautami Bhatt. She is a Masters student in Power & Control Engineering at the University of Houston.