Since the Kyoto Protocol was signed in 1997, emissions trading has become a widely discussed instrument for climate policy. One reason for the attention emissions trading has received is that it had already been the subject of intense debate in the United States owing to the introduction of several national US programs in the early 1980s and 1990s. However, the idea of using emissions trading as an instrument for climate policy has not yet received much attention in the literature.

The aim of this book is to help fill this gap by bringing together scholars in the fields of economics, political science, and law, and thereby providing a description, analysis, and evaluation of various aspects of emissions trading as an instrument for controlling greenhouse gases.

The chapters of this book were first presented and discussed at the “Climate Protection and Emissions Trading – US and European Perspectives” conference in Dresden (Germany) on October 20–22, 2002; the content was then revised for the purpose of this book. The conference was supported and financed by the Egon Sohmen Foundation. I would like to thank the Foundation for its strong support for the whole enterprise.

In the preparation of the conference and the book I received assistance from Dr. Frank Wätzold and Frank Gagelmann. I also owe thanks to Ms. Ogarit Uhlman, without whose outstanding organizational support the conference could not have taken place. In addition, two anonymous referees provided helpful comments on preliminary versions, which clearly improved the quality of the book.