By Michael Szabo
Under the Kyoto Protocol, rich countries need U.N. approval to trade carbon offsets, or credits, to count against their emissions targets.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, the official said he expected the next connections within two to three months.
"Some other non-European countries are getting close, but it's difficult to say about their state of entry."
The U.N.'s carbon trading platform, the International Transaction Log (ITL), allows companies from the Kyoto Protocol's 38 developed, 'Annex B' countries to trade carbon credits. But countries need their own registries and U.N. approval before they can link up.
Ukraine, the only country to have received JI credits from the U.N. so far, has 755,851 Emissions Reduction Units (ERUs) which can be traded and physically delivered once the ITL connection is operational.
Russia and Ukraine are expected to corner the ERU market through 2012 with a potential stockpile of some 400 million tons, more than 80 percent of the estimated total supply, Core Carbon Group's chief climate change officer Morten Prehn Sorensen told Reuters.
EUROPE READY?
Companies participating in the European Union's emissions trading scheme have been trading Kyoto emissions credits via forward contracts for some time, though delivery has not yet been possible as the link between the EU's trading platform, called the CITL, and the U.N. system may be delayed until 2009.
Although the European Commission said late last year this could be as late as April 2009, the U.N. official was more optimistic on the target.
($1=.6838 Euro)
(Additional Reporting by Gerard Wynn, Editing by William Hardy)
