The National Allocation Plan (NAP) stipulates the rules for the allocation of allowances to the installations participating in emissions trading. The allowances are allocated on the basis of the actual CO2 emissions of the individual installations. To determine the quantity of emissions, data was gathered on a voluntary basis through a comprehensive data enquiry by the German Federal Ministry for the Environment. This article reports on the results of the data enquiry.

In order to comply with the European directive on emissions trading  the Member States have to establish so-called national allocation plans within a very short time frame which state the total number of allowances to be allocated and the rules of allocation. To establish such a plan in Germany, it is necessary to conduct an extensive data collection in order to understand the emissions of each installation which is covered by the directive.