German chem group warns EU against limiting CO2 certificates

14 March 2012 18:06  [Source: ICIS news]

LONDON (ICIS)--Germany’s chemical producers’ trade group on Wednesday warned the EU against cutting the quantity of available carbon dioxide (CO2) certificates.

The warning by Frankfurt-based Verband der Chemischen Industrie (VCI) came ahead of an upcoming vote in the European Parliament.

That vote is expected to result in parliament calling on the European Commission to cut the number of CO2 certificates, thus raising certificate prices and implicitly raising the EU’s climate targets.

VCI general manager Utz Tillmann said any such move by the Commission would amount to a serious intervention into the CO2 market system.

Chemical and other industrial producers would find it very hard to plan investments if the Commission changes the rules for carbon trading, just because it found that prices for CO2 certificates were too low, Tillmann said.

EU politics were becoming impossible to predict, which poses a serious threat to the competitiveness of Europe’s industrial producers, he added.

By: Stefan Baumgarten
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