Germany says EU carbon deal to remove 200 million permits a year from 2019

[May 06, 2015]  BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany expects an EU deal to reform its carbon market to result in the one-off removal of 900 million backloaded permits from the market, plus a further 200 million certificates per year from 2019, an environment ministry spokesman said on Wednesday, correcting comments made earlier by a senior German official.

"According to the compromise, 900 million metric tons (1 metric ton = 1.1023 tons) of CO2 that had been backloaded will go into the reserve. Then from 2019 (there will be) about 200 million metric tons per year to start with," said the spokesman.

The EU agreed on Tuesday to start reforming its Emissions Trading System (ETS) from 2019, opening the way for a more radical shake-up of a system that is meant to be a central plank of EU climate policy.

Earlier, an official in the ministry said the agreement would result in the removal of more than 1 billion certificates from the market per year from 2019. The official had misspoken, said the ministry spokesman.

(Reporting by Markus Wacket; Writing by Madeline Chambers; Editing by Victoria Bryan)

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