The European Commission’s draft proposal regarding auctioning in the third phase of the EU ETS received further criticism during a business-governments debate trying to finalize its details this week. In particular, the lack of rules and market oversight in the draft, which establishes a central auctioning platform but allows for opt outs by member until 2016, were central themes among the critics of the proposal.

The debate sees two main blocks of countries: on one side the UK and Germany, alongside Poland and Spain, have lobbied for the opt-out provisions, to preserve their current well functioning auctioning platforms. On the other side, France and the rest of the EU members, which oppose the provision, call for rules to be defined, to oversee the working of the national platforms and sanctions those that do not conform to the rules of the central one.

Pressure on the EC to finalize the draft comes also from the market, with utilities demanding to set auctioning details (dates and volumes) as soon as possible in order to provide certainty to traders.

Climate Policy News

• This news is extracted from the Climate Policy News : a CMCC weekly column that summarises the latest news on international climate change agreements, the updates on the carbon market and the energy and technology updates in the realm of climate change. Go to the web page and see all previous issues since March 2007.
• This week:  EC under pressure over auctioning details; Canada closer to climate bill implementation; KLG bill ready to go public; Brazil evaluates ETS proposal; The carbon market this week – Download the May 3-9, 2010 Newsletter [Pdf 42,8 Kb]