23 November 2011
Growing fears about the EU economy have prompted a new wave of downgrades of carbon price forecasts – including a prediction by UBS that prices could slump to €3 ($4.06) next year. Other analysts are critical of the forecasts, saying they are unrealistically low.Analysts at Swiss bank UBS last week said that they expect EU allowance (EUA) prices to fall to €5 in 2012-13, with the possibility they may collapse to as low as €3. This, they said, is due to the financial crisis, which has created a surplus of EUAs – which will take until 2025 to disappear – and has also weakened buyers’ balance sheets.
“The carbon price has fallen by 40% since June reflecting growing oversupply,” said the UBS report. “We expect an acceleration of the decline as the primary supply of allowances, not given for free, should increase by 74-142%.” This supply boost includes looming auctions by the European Investment Bank (EIB), increased supply of certified emission reductions (CERs), sales of allowances held by governments in Phase II ‘new entrants’ reserves’ (NERs) and a flood of emission reduction units issued by Russia and Ukraine.
EUA prices have continued to fall since the report’s publication, and the benchmark December 2011 futures contract was trading at €9.05 late this morning on ICE Futures Europe – slightly up from last night’s close, but still close to historic lows.
Lobby group the Climate Markets & Investment Association (CMIA) blasted the report, stating that “the headline €3 price may have overlooked a number of key issues”, such as the looming exclusion of certain types of CERs from the EU Emissions Trading System (ETS) from 2013.
Barclays Capital analyst Trevor Sikorski also argued that the €3 floor is not a reasonable price expectation. In a research note published on Monday, he said that such a low price level “would involve a massive discount to be placed on the future value of a right to emit, and that is unlikely to be in line with market participants’ expectations of future value given the ability to bank permits”.
Meanwhile, Société Générale analysts on Monday said the eurozone crisis is sending the bloc into a recession, and dropped their EUA price forecast for 2012 to €12.30, from €15.80. The bank anticipates utility buying to ramp up next year, ahead of Phase III, which starts in 2013.
“We still expect carbon prices to increase in the medium term once the financial crisis is under control. In 2012 buying pressure from utilities should push prices up. After reaching low levels at the end of 2011, momentum should turn bullish in [the first quarter of 2012] and prices should rebound, a trend that is likely to continue throughout 2012. EUA should climb back towards €15.30/t in 2013,” they said.
Source: Environmental Finance. To read the full story, click here.