The European Environment Agency has developed a new greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions viewer, where users can display emission data broken down by Member State, year and trading sector in a user-friendly interface. With this viewer, the EU Emission Trading Scheme (ETS) data become significantly more accessible for a wide range of users.

Over 11,000 industrial installations in Europe - which represent close to half of Europe's emissions of CO2 - are covered by the EU's Emission Trading Scheme. The ultimate goal of the EU ETS is to help EU Member States achieve conformity with their present and future commitments to combat climate change under the Kyoto Protocol, and it is the first international trading system for GHG in the world.

The new display tool incorporates data from the Community Independent Transaction Log (CITL), the emissions registry run by the European Commission for GHG. Users can retrieve data on the amount of emissions generated by various trading sectors (combustion plants, oil refineries, coke ovens, iron and steel plants, and factories making cement, glass, lime, brick, ceramics, pulp and paper) in any EU Member State for the first period of the ETS, namely 2005–2007.

In addition, the viewer features up-to-date information to determine if a particular trading sector was granted too many or too few allowances compared to their actual level of emissions.

In spite of the complexity of the data contained under the CITL, the viewer has a simple interface. Data come in a single document, encapsulated in a popular spreadsheet format (Excel). Once the file is downloaded to a given computer, the user may generate graphs - with just a few clicks - and retrieve country or sector-specific information. A comprehensive manual with instructions, in electronic format, is included in the viewer.

The CITL viewer complements the EEA greenhouse gas viewer - an interactive tool that allows easy web access to the main emissions data submitted by the European Community to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).