EU Carbon Falls for First Time in a Month as Fast-Track

March 1 (Bloomberg) -- EU carbon permit prices posted their first weekly decline in more than a month after lawmakers rejected speeding up a plan to tackle the market’s oversupply.

Allowances for December dropped 4.7 percent to close at 4.67 euros ($6.08) a metric ton on London’s ICE Futures Europe, 10 percent lower than a week earlier. The contract’s last weekly decline came in the five days ending Jan. 25.

The European Parliament’s environment committee approved last week a plan by the European Commission, the bloc’s regulator, to delay the sale of 900 million tons of permits in the next three years, and redistribute it in 2019 and 2020. At a Feb. 25 meeting it didn’t agree a mandate to start accelerated negotiations on the proposal with member states.

United Nations Certified Emission Reductions for March had their biggest-ever weekly increase even as supply next month was set to jump more than six times to the second most since the market started. CERs rose 11 percent to 24 euro cents a ton. The contract gained 71 percent from a week earlier.

The UN is scheduled to supply nearly 61 million offsets in the next four weeks, after creating the fewest for two years in February, according to UN data compiled by Bloomberg.

--Editors: Matthew Brown, Andrew Reierson