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Major companies urge EU to act on carbon prices

venerdì 29 giugno 2012

Major companies, including Royal Dutch Shell PLC (RDSB) and General Electric Co. (GE), have urged the European Union to take action to prop up prices on the bloc's carbon market and restore its credibility, according to a letter seen by Dow Jones Newswires.

"A fully-functioning EU Emissions Trading System is the main policy to achieve the EU's goal of an 80%-95% cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050" compared with 1990, the 13 companies and business associations said in a letter addressed to European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, five commissioners and the commission's secretary general.

The letter is a sign of how the record-low carbon price on the EU market is worrying big corporations that have invested in technologies to reduce CO2 emissions. Low prices undermine one of the market's fundamental aims, which is to trigger more such investments. The higher the price, the more companies would be encouraged to invest to avoid buying expensive permits permitting emissions.

Prices of permits on the ETS have fallen due to a mix of initial oversupply and as the economic downturn has slimmed industrial activity.

However not all companies agree on the issue, as some see in any more stringent climate regulation a cost rather than an investment opportunity.

In a separate letter to the commission BusinessEurope, an influential Brussels-based business lobby group, explicitly argues that short-term measures wouldn't help.

"Pre-emptive short-term measures would create a precedent, resulting in greater uncertainty, which has to be avoided and could have major repercussions for EU industry, which is already under strain from the economic crisis," the BusinessEurope letter said.

The letters come as the commission is preparing a proposal--which it plans to present during the summer--on how to start solving the problem. The main idea would be to slow the release of new permits on to the market, to create a shortage and consequently push prices higher.

While the 13 companies support the idea, BusinessEurope is against it.

In the first letter, the companies suggest that the commission should aim at withdrawing roughly 1.4 million permits from the market, and urged the commission to propose measures to strengthen the ETS and ensure its long-term viability.

Fuente: The Wall Street Journal

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