| Sourced From Bloomberg.com |
June 29 (Bloomberg) — E.ON AG, Germany’s biggest utility, will become more selective when it sponsors projects to reduce greenhouse gas, its chief executive officer said.
The Dusseldorf-based power generator has put up money for carbon-dioxide cutting efforts worldwide in exchange for United Nations emission credits, which it can use to comply with European Union pollution limits. E.ON developed several projects to curb emissions in nations including China, Thailand and South Africa, according to its Web site.
“We will have to become more selective in our projects because otherwise, we are involved in too many small projects in too many countries,” E.ON CEO Wulf Bernotat said in an interview in Norwich, England. “We will reach the point where we have to focus on a few projects in a restricted number of countries.”
Bernotat said lawmakers around the world should set policies to help secure energy at affordable prices while minimizing climate change. The emissions-trading law proposed in the U.S. is “a step toward” a global climate deal, he said.
“It is not enough,” Bernotat said of the proposed American Clean Energy and Security Act, which the U.S. House of Representative narrowly passed on June 26. “Energy waste in the U.S. is colossal,” he said at a briefing for reporters.
About 190 nations are in talks to set new international climate-protection laws starting in 2013. The talks are being run by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change to extend the 1997 Kyoto Protocol at the December summit in Copenhagen.
Cap and Trade
The bill passed by the House last week would set up a cap- and-trade system for carbon allowances in the U.S. The EU has traded CO2 since 2005.
Governments allocated 53.2 million metric tons of emission allowances to E.ON in 2008, 30 percent less than it received in 2007, according to its Web site. That means it needs to cut its output of carbon dioxide, buy more permits on the market or invest in additional UN emission-reduction projects.
The UN’s Clean Development Mechanism last year made up 26 percent of the $126 billion in emission credits and allowances that traded worldwide, according to World Bank figures.
E.ON is still investing in UN-certified projects, Bernotat said. “We’ve just started one in China and we are looking at a number of opportunities,” he said. E.ON wants to make sure its not “spreading our activities too thinly.”
The utility traded 100 million metric tons of emission allowances in the three months through March 31, compared with 29 million in the year-earlier period, according to a quarterly report published May 13. The gains in trading volumes reflect the company’s decision to consolidate its regional trading centers in one trading company in Dusseldorf.
By Michel Doermer and Mathew Carr
To contact the reporter on this story: Michel Doermer in London at mdoermer@bloomberg.netMathew Carr in London at m.carr@bloomberg.net
