TABLE OF CONTENTS 
The European Commission's emissions-trading scheme should impose a cost on energy generators that produce carbon dioxide, favouring renewable generation.
In July 2005 Greenpeace set out a list of changes that would have to be made to support and encourage DG in the UK. Among its proposals were changes to building regulations that would ensure that distributed energy was used in new homes and business premises, changes in the rules on network access and export tariffs that would support the export of excess power from small generators, and tax changes that would give a financial incentive for installing distributed energy. Progress in some of these areas has been significant, as is described elsewhere in this book. Many believe, however, that all progress on distributed energy must be underpinned, and will be given much more impetus, if the effect of carbon dioxide emissions is fully assessed and costed.
Greenpeace raises this possibility in its wish list as a tool to make visible the effects of carbon dioxide emissions from large fossil-fuel-generating stations and impose a financial penalty accordingly. But many believe that 'discovering' a price for carbon dioxide emissions will be fundamental to shifting the balance of our energy industry. When the price of carbon dioxide emissions is factored into the energy price, it should reward companies and individuals who switch to the most efficient forms of energy generation, as well as those who use sources that, like renewables, do not produce carbon dioxide emissions.
