European Union politicians have narrowly rejected a plan to rescue the world’s biggest carbon market, sending it plunging to a new record low and raising questions about its survival.
After months of bitter debate, a plenary session of the European Parliament in Strasbourg rejected by 19 votes a European Commission proposal to remove temporarily some of the oversupply that has overwhelmed the market for permits to emit carbon dioxide.
Ireland, holder of the rotating EU presidency, said support for the carbon market was still a priority and it would seek agreement from member states, debating in parallel with the parliamentary process, as a matter of urgency.
Reuters Newsagency reports the EC, the EU executive, and many in the power sector are keen for a higher carbon price to drive investment in lower carbon energy.
Traders took the lack of political support as a signal to sell, driving the market down to its lowest yet.
Immediately after the vote, carbon prices dropped by around 40 per cent to €2.63 a tonne, then rose to €3.14, down 34 per cent.
Australia’s carbon market will move to an ETS in 2015 with its price linked directly to that of the EU ETS and under the present EU collapse that could have serious repercussions for the Australian Labor government’s budget forecasts.
“The carbon market is now in a coma, until a clear intervention takes place,” an EU emissions trader said.
Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard said the EC still believed its proposal, known as back-loading, could restore confidence in the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) pending deeper reforms.
“We will now reflect on the next steps to ensure that Europe has a strong EU ETS,” Ms Hedegaard said.
“The market, the investors and our international partners are all waiting.”
However, she said forging agreement on climate policy had become a lot harder following economic crisis.
“The vote shows it has become more difficult than it was three years ago, five years ago.
“Still I hope that in Europe, we would not have become so poor that we think it should cost nothing to pollute,” she told Reuters.
A majority of member states is said to support the Commission proposal, and national representatives are expected to debate what to do next this week.
The EC’s back-loading plan was meant to be a quick fix that could be agreed by the end of last year.
However, it exposed deep divisions, with interest groups intensively lobbying members of the European Parliament.
Ms Hedegaard and many analysts have said failure to agree on EU steps would fragment environmental policy as EU member states tried to safeguard their own green targets.
Britain, for instance, already has a carbon price floor.
Analysts say a price of around €50 is needed to encourage a switch away from coal to generation from less polluting sources.
The power sector and other energy companies, such as Royal Dutch Shell, keen to promote natural gas, have strongly supported the EC plan.
Together with more than 40 firms, representing more than €875 billion in turnover, Shell placed a full-page advertisement in the Financial Times newspaper, saying back-loading was needed as a stop-gap measure.
“Without agreement on the back-loading proposal the price will fall further threatening the long-term survival of the EU ETS and lead to fragmentation of the single energy market through a patchwork of national regulations,” it said.
Opposition has been led by energy intensive industries.
They have argued intervention in the ETS will push up energy costs when Europe is already suffering a competitive disadvantage compared with the United States, which has benefited from abundant supplies of shale gas.
Reuters reports debate on deeper, structural reforms, such as the permanent withdrawal of allowances, is under way, but is expected to take a long time via tangled EU process.
The EC has also kicked off discussion on 2030 energy and environment policy to succeed 2020 goals.
At member state level, EU sources say a majority support back-loading even though Poland, heavily reliant on carbon-intensive coal, is opposed to it and Germany has failed to take a formal position because of divisions within its government.
“Reducing the number of emissions certificates would be an intervention in a functioning market system. It would place an additional burden on our industry and harm the competitiveness of Germany and the whole EU,” German Economy Minister Philipp Roesler said in a statement.
German Environment Minister Peter Altmaier had a very different view, saying it was “not a good day for Germany”.
“My concern is that critics of back-loading haven’t thought about the fact that calls for regulatory intervention by the state will grow louder now, so I hope we will manage to push it through in a second attempt in the European Parliament,” he told German television channel ARD.
Environmental campaign groups voiced dismay at Tuesday’s vote, which Greenpeace called “a historic failure”.
“In its present form, the carbon market will not stop a single coal plant from being built,” Greenpeace EU climate policy director Joris den Blan
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