Sunday 15 January 2017

Five private firms win in $13m climate auction

The World Bank has allocated $13 million (£10.7m) through its third climate auction.

A total of 13 companies participated in the online Pilot Auction Facility (PAF), with five firms winning contracts.

That gives them the right to sell their future carbon credits to PAF at a fixed price of $2.10 (£1.7)/carbon credit.

If redeemed, these contracts would reduce the equivalent of 6.2 million tons of carbon emissions, according to the World Bank.

The winning firms are Belektron, Carbon Climate Protection, Enaex, Quality Carbon Asset and WeAct Pty.

While the first two auctions targeted methane emissions from landfills, the latest one targeted reductions in Nitrous Oxide.

Both greenhouse gases are highly potent, with the latter said to have a global warming potential of nearly 300 times that of Carbon Dioxide.

An example of Nitrous Oxide emissions would be from the industrial production of Nitric Acid, used to produce fertiliser.

The World Bank states: “The PAF has successfully demonstrated that auctions can efficiently allocate scarce public funds, maximise climate impact of concessional financing, promote price discovery of reducing emissions and help the private sector mitigate risk.”