The European Investment Bank's 125 million euro ($163.5 million) post-2012 carbon fund has bought 1.15 million Kyoto carbon offsets from green projects in China and Mexico, the fund's advisor said on Thursday.

The Post 2012 Carbon Credit Fund agreed to purchase U.N.-approved Certified Emission Reductions (CERs) from a Chinese wind farm and a Mexican waste-to-energy project for delivery after 2012, First Climate said in a statement.

"The Fund has agreed to buy the certificates generated after 2012, thereby giving the projects certainty about revenues," First Climate said.

The value of the deal was not announced, but CERs for delivery in 2012 closed at 10.41 euros a tonne on Wednesday according to the Reuters CER Index <CER/RTR>.

The Fund was launched last April by the EIB with France's Caisse des Depots, Spain's Instituto de Credito Oficial, Germany's KfW Bankengruppe, and Finland's Nordic Investment Bank.

The Fund buys CERs to be issued under the Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) to clean energy projects in developing countries after 2012.

With Kyoto set to expire in 2012, the fate of the CDM is unknown as governments scramble to agree a successor agreement.  Absence of a new pact would cast further uncertainty onto the booming $120 billion international carbon market.

"Other project developers should be encouraged to initiate further emission reduction projects as they can sell certificates to the Fund at a guaranteed price and use the proceeds for the financing of their projects - - regardless of the outcome of the United Nations' ongoing negotiations," said Urs Brodmann, one of the fund's advisors.

First Climate said they are in talks to buy more post-2012 CERs from renewable energy and energy efficiency projects in India, China and Latin America.


Source: Reuters