The claimant claimed damages of 5,781,000 Euros from the defendant for breach of four contracts by which DB acquired from TGS through the European Union Emissions Trading System for 5,737,440 Euros a total of 492,000 Certified Emissions Reductions (‘CERs’), which are instruments created under the Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (‘UNFCCC’). DB’s claim is that the contracts provided that the CERs ‘may be used for determining compliance with emissions limitation commitments pursuant to and in accordance with the [EUETS]’. They complain that the CERs that they acquired from TGS did not meet that requirement (i) because they had previously been ‘surrendered’ under the EUETS, that is to say exchanged for allowances, and the European Commission, as regulator of the EUETS, had introduced and published in December 2009 and January 2010 a check that prevented surrendered CERs from being used for compliance purposes under it, and (ii) in any case, they argue, surrendered CERs could not legally have been so used. (I shall adopt the expression ‘surrendered CERs’ as a convenient label, and I shall refer to CERs that have not been surrendered as ‘conventional CERs’.
Judges:
Andrew Smith J
Citations:
[2012] EWHC 1201 (Comm)
Links:
Jurisdiction:
England and Wales
Contract, Environment
Updated: 21 October 2022; Ref: scu.457627