The paper presents the impact of the reformed EU ETS (Emission Trading Scheme – ETS in
the European Union) on the currently operating market for trading in CO2 emission allowances.
The new Directive introduced a number of changes aimed at tightening the climate policy, which
the Polish energy sector based mainly on hard coal may mean an increase in the costs of electricity
production, and thus an increase in the cost of the entire economy.
The main goal of the changes is to achieve one of the objectives the European Union has set for itself,
i.e. the reduction of CO2 emissions by 40% until the year 2030. These assumptions are the result of
joint arrangements of the EU countries under the Paris Agreement on climate change adopted in 2015.
The Directive introduces a new market stability reserve mechanism (MSR) which, according to its
assumptions, is designed to ensure a demand and supply balance of the ETS. Bearing the balance in
mind, it means the reduction of excess allowances, which, although their number is decreasing, it is
decreasing to slowly according to EU legislators, still oscillating around 2 billion EUA.
The paper also draws attention to the rigorous assumptions adopted in the new Directive, aimed at
increasing the price of CO2, that is the costs in electricity production. Due to manually-controlled
prices, are we doomed to high CO2 prices and therefore the prices of electricity? What are its estimated
maximum levels? Will the new assumptions encourage the Member States to switch to lowcarbon
technologies? Can they weaken the economies of countries that are currently based mainly
on coal energy sources, and strengthen countries where green energy is developed?
A domestic hot water (DHW) system has been modernized in a multi-family house, located in the southeastern part of Poland, inhabited by 105 people. The existing heating system (2 gas boilers) was extended by a solar system consisting of 32 evacuated tube collectors with a heat pipe (the absorber area: 38.72 m2). On the basis of the system performance data, the ecological effect of the modernization, expressed in avoided CO2 emission, was estimated. The use of the solar thermal system allows CO2 emissions to be reduced up to 4.4 Mg annually. When analyzing the environmental effects of the application of the solar system, the production cycle of the most material-consuming components, namely: DHW storage tank and solar collectors, was taken into account. To further reduce CO2 emission, a photovoltaic installation (PV), supplying electric power to the pump-control system of the solar thermal system has been proposed. In the Matlab computing environment, based on the solar installation measurement data and the data of the total radiation intensity measurement, the area of photovoltaic panels and battery capacity has been optimized. It has been shown that the photovoltaic panel of approx. 1.8 m2 and 12 V battery capacity of approx. 21 Ah gives the greatest ecological effects in the form of the lowest CO2 emission. If a photovoltaic system was added it could reduce emissions by up to an additional 160 kg per year. The above calculations take also emissions resulting from the production of PV panels and batteries into account.