Ecologic Institute contributed key components of a comprehensive review of the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) as part of a consortium of institutions who specialise in environmental policy. The review informs a stakeholder process for improving the EU ETS that is part of Europe's "climate and energy package 2030."

The review, which is split into specific chapters analysing and evaluating various aspects of the EU ETS, contributes to a new impact assessment on options for improving the EU ETS Directive. The outcome of the previous EU ETS review in 2008 (“the revised EU ETS Directive”) prepared the ground for the trading programme's third trading phase (2013-2020), which featured changes including an extended scope, the new centrally determined single EU cap, preferred allocation by auctioning, and improved registry rules. This study focuses mainly on the ETS Directive after those changes, in order to evaluate the situation before and after putting in place of the rules for 2013-2020. It is intended to inform further changes as part of a wider stakeholder process for improving the EU ETS, which is in turn part of the EU Commission's overall preparation of Europe's “climate and energy 2030 package.”

The specific areas of the review to which Ecologic contributed most thoroughly were auctioning, free allocation and carbon leakage, and the clean energy financing instrument known as the NER 300.