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EU Nations May Buy More UN CO2 Credits Without Treaty, Morgan Stanley Says

By Mathew Carr

March 18 (Bloomberg) -- European Union governments will likely buy more United Nations emissions credits relative to companies if a global climate-protection agreement fails to pass, according to Morgan Stanley.

The countries would likely boost buying from the so-called UN clean development mechanism to meet a target to cut greenhouse gas emissions 20 percent by 2020 from 1990 levels, Olivia Hartridge, a vice president and carbon trader at Morgan Stanley in London, said yesterday at the Carbon Market Insights conference in Copenhagen.

Currently most UN permits are bought by companies in the EU emissions trading system, the world’s biggest. The 2020 target includes road transport, households and industries excluded from that program. The EU has said it would boost the target to 30 percent provided there is an international agreement in 2013 to replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol.

“I think that we are going to see a relative increasing of the importance of EU government buyers in the CDM market in the absence of an international agreement,” Hartridge said.

Factories and power stations in the EU carbon dioxide program can buy CDM credits as an alternative to EU allowances. Governments of developed nations can use them to comply with targets in the Kyoto agreement.

EU emission allowances for delivery in December fell 3.1 percent to 12.56 euros ($16.36) a metric ton on London’s European Climate Exchange today at 9:50 a.m. CDM credits, known as certified emission reductions, for December decreased 2.3 percent to 11.45 euros a ton.

“Right in this point of time, I’m not seeing, in the absence of any international agreement, any particular reason for CERs to break out of their box and to surpass the level of EU allowances,” Hartridge said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Mathew Carr in Copenhagen via [e-mail]

Last Updated: March 18, 2009 05:54 EDT