Plan to Support EU Carbon Prices Expected in September

Point Carbon reported Friday that the European Commission will unveil a plan to prop up carbon prices sometime in September.  The plan is expected to hinge around redesign of the current auctioning profile for Phase 3 (2013 - 2020) of the EU ETS. The idea is that by holding back some credits from the early years of that period until later in the phase, the short-mid term supply could be tightened.  While a deepening of the 2020 target or an overall cancellation of a lrge number of units is still necessary in order to address the long-term surplus of credits to 2020, this could be a fix for the short term until those measures can be put into action.  Importantly, redesign of the auctioning profile does not require unanimity of support by Member States.