2 October 2008 | Luca Del Buono

 

Italy's biggest utility Enel will make considerable profits and cut costs under emissions trading schemes in Europe and the Kyoto Protocol, even while it boosts its coal plant fleet, its head of carbon strategy told Reuters.

The European Union's emissions trading scheme is the bloc's main policy to fight climate change and imposes caps on industrial emissions of greenhouse gases.

It allows companies to buy carbon offsets from outside Europe -- by funding emissions-cutting projects in developing nations -- to help cut the cost of staying within those EU emissions limits.

It is from this trade that Enel, a major carbon market player, stands to make profits of hundreds of millions of euros in 2008-2012, under the Kyoto Protocol's clean development mechanism (CDM).

The company has bought twice as many cut-price offsets, called certified emissions reduction (CERs), as it expects to exceed EU emissions limits from 2008-12, Eliano Russo said in a telephone interview.

"Based on completed contracts and referring to potential volumes, we have more than 100 million tons (of CERs) in our portfolio," said Russo.

"Instead of buying (European Union) allowances on the market we will swap CERs for them. This will allow us to cut sharply the cost of compliance," Russo said.

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Source: Reuters

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