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Like it or lump it, the EU Emission Trading Scheme is going to be with us for at least 11 years. It's at the core of Europe's response to climate change - but we weren't sure what people thought about it, so in our last newsletter we ran a poll. 78 of you responded and you had a real range of views.

Here are the results:

As environmental market enthusiasts, we had thought that those with a stronger understanding of the scheme would be more supportive of it. In fact, there was no relationship between levels of knowledge and support, suggesting that people often base their view of the scheme on a political ideology and are unlikely to be swayed in the other direction.

Among those who felt that the scheme could work in principle but hasn't been set up properly, a key concern was industrial lobbying for free allowances. Many of you felt that free allocation removed the incentive to reduce emissions and governments should auction allowances instead.

We agree that levels of auctioning should be as high as possible - because it's the most transparent and fair way to determine who can pollute. But some carefully targeted free allocation is necessary to prevent certain industries (like steel mills) from moving outside Europe to a country where they can emit as much carbon as they like.

One question the issue of auctioning raises is: where does the money go? We knew someone was going to ask that, so we've made it the subject of our next article.