Emissions Trading — the Reality in Georgia
If you are looking for an emissions trading scheme on the European model — a quota market where producers buy and sell emission allowances — no such scheme exists in Georgia. Georgian legislation currently has no emissions trading system and no statutory carbon market; voluntary carbon credits are unregulated. What does exist is the regime of greenhouse gas emission authorization and monitoring, reporting and verification established by the Law on Environmental Protection — and this page explains the legal instruments you actually have for dealing with emissions today.
This distinction matters practically: strategies calculated on the European calendar do not transfer directly to Georgia. Here a company's climate obligation begins not with a quota but with compliance with emission norms and, in defined cases, with authorization; and any link to international trading markets — if it exists — must be achieved through other instruments.
The Starting Framework — Principles and Emission Norms
The starting legal framework consists of the basic principles of environmental protection: when planning and carrying out activities, state authorities and all natural and legal persons must be guided by the principles of risk reduction, sustainability, paid nature use, polluter pays and others. In the climate context this means: the emitter is answerable for the damage and obliged to reduce the risk.
At the technical level, the permissible limit norms for the emission of harmful substances into the environment are developed for each concrete source of pollution, taking into account its technological features and the background pollution of its location, while the norms themselves are determined once every five years by a regulation developed and approved by the ministry. This is the quantitative foundation on which any management of emissions — trading or reduction — must be built. A five year norm cycle means that emission baselines shift periodically, and compliance planning must follow the current regulation rather than historical figures.