World Bank to hold $25 mn auction for UN carbon credits

The World Bank will hold an auction worth $25 million in June for UN-backed carbon credits from projects designed to cut methane emissions, the bank said on Monday.

The so-called Pilot Auction Facility will offer tradable put options, giving project owners the right to sell credits to the bank's Methane and Climate Change Fund at a set price, said Brice Quesnel, a senior carbon finance specialist at the World Bank.

Germany, Sweden, Switzerland and the United States have contributed a total of $53 million to the fund, which is hoping to raise a total of $100 million to help finance schemes to cut greenhouse gas emissions blamed for global warming.

The auction comes at a time when investment in carbon-cutting investments under U.N. programmes has slowed as countries wrangle over the design of a new global climate pact to come into force in 2020.

The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) -- the UN's main carbon market set up by the Kyoto Protocol -- has helped to channel more than $400 billion to carbon-cutting projects in developing countries by allowing investors to earn credits they can sell for use in meeting emission targets in richer nations.

But the pipeline of new projects has stalled as prices for CDM credits have crashed to below 50 cents a tonne from over $20 seven years ago, making many schemes unprofitable.

For credits to be eligible they must have been issued by the UN after the auction, Quesnel said.