Lawmakers representing a broad majority in the European Parliament's environment committee, backed most of the changes, the legislature's lead negotiator Peter Liese said on Wednesday.
Liese said the deal to leave households out of the new market was a "painful compromise" but that he considered it a win, in light of the opposition from some countries and lawmakers to introducing the scheme at all. Change is also coming to the EU's current carbon market, the EU Emissions Trading System , its core climate policy, which forces power plants and factories to buy CO2 permits when they pollute and caps the supply of permits.The lawmakers agreed to make it easier to respond to price spikes in the carbon market and reward industrial companies with the best environmental performance by giving them extra free permits, taken from firms without a plan to decarbonise.
However, lawmakers could not agree on all elements. Some parliamentary groups agreed to push for even tougher rules - including an end to free CO2 permits for industry by the end of the decade.