Emissions trading, currently confined to large businesses, is emerging as a key instrument in the drive to reduce GHG emissions. The UK scheme is open to the 6,000 companies with Climate Change Agreements. These negotiated agreements between business and Government set energy-related targets. The scheme ended in December 2006 and has now been replaced by the ‘Carbon Reduction Commitment’ – a mandatory scheme. The EU Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) is being introduced across Europe to reduce emissions of CO2. Phase I of the scheme lasted from 1 January 2005 to 31 December 2007, and Phase II runs to the end of 2012. The Council of Ministers has agreed in principle to extend the scheme to the forestry and land use sectors. However, numerous obstacles lie ahead and it may be that other ways will need to be found to put a value on the carbon which can be locked up by agriculture and land management in the UK, and on the emissions thereby averted from other sectors. In addition, the EU has agreed to adopt a binding commitment to meet 10% of road fuel supply from biofuels by 2020, subject to agreement on certain preconditions, and the UK Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation, which implements this, took effect in April 2008. In future, it may be possible for those supplying renewable energy sources to secure additional income by carbon trading, which could form an additional incentive. However, for the moment only installations in developing countries may count towards the accredited scheme. Defra has commissioned work to consider the potential benefits of including agriculture, forestry and land management within carbon trading schemes, and the practicalities of so doing. At some point, the EU ETS scope is likely to be extended to agriculture, and to emissions of nitrous oxides and methane, though the difficulty and transaction costs of measuring and marketing emissions from small enterprises remain to be resolved, and there are other easier targets to address first. The Country Land and Business Association with sponsorship from the East of England Development Agency and Savills, has now introduced its ‘CALM’ (climate-aware land management) calculator for land-based businesses to use to calculate their own carbon-equivalence footprint and point the way to cost effective savings.