Poland says to sell CO2 permits to Ireland soon

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Poland will sign an accord shortly under the global Kyoto Protocol to sell surplus carbon emission permits worth 15 million euros to Ireland, Environment Minister Maciej Nowicki said on Saturday.

The Protocol allows signatory nations that are comfortably below their emissions targets to sell surpluses in the form of credits, called Assigned Amount Units (AAUs), to governments and companies that are short of their goals.

It would be the second such government-to-government deal for Poland, the European Union's biggest ex-communist member, after it sold 25 million euros in AAUs to Spain this month.

"In one or two weeks at most we will sign such a contract with Ireland. Together with the one already signed with Spain, they will be worth 40 million euros," Nowicki told a panel marking the second anniversary of Prime Minister Donald Tusk's centre-right government.

Poland has some 500 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent of AAUs to sell as much of its highly polluting industry has shut down since the end of communism in 1989. It is also hoping to sell permits to Japan.

Nowicki has said Warsaw will spend money raised from the AAUs only on programmes to cut greenhouse gas emissions such as those investing in renewable energy sources, energy efficiency and clean-coal technology.

He has said Poland, which still derives much of its energy from heavily polluting coal, may sell more than 1 billion zlotys ($363 million) of carbon emission permits by the end of 2010.