Dec. 3 (Bloomberg) -- Russia will stockpile an estimated $58 billion in carbon-emissions credits it’s accumulating by performing better than required under the Kyoto global-warming treaty to reduce greenhouse gases.

Victor Blinov, deputy chief of Russia’s delegation to United Nations climate talks in Poland, said in an interview that credits not needed to comply with the Kyoto Protocol will be used instead for a successor treaty that’s being negotiated to take effect after 2012. None will be sold to other nations, Blinov said.

The comments may help quell speculation about what Russia will do with credits that cover releasing 3.3 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide through 2012, or about 18 months of greenhouse- gas emissions from all the factories and power plants in the 27- member European Union, according to World Bank estimates.

“It is credible to me,” Emmanuel Fages, a Paris-based analyst at Societe Generale, said today in an interview about the statements. Fages said he had assumed Russia would sell about 300 million of the allowances through 2012.

Under Kyoto, Russia and 36 other nations got greenhouse-gas targets for the 2008-2012 period. They were granted credits, called “assigned amount units,” to cover all permissible emissions. These can be sold if nations undershoot their goals.

The AAUs, as they are known in the trade, are sold over-the- counter without published prices. Russia’s holding is worth 46 billion euros ($58 billion) based on a similar UN-certified credit trading in London. Global carbon trade totaled $64 billion in 2007, the World Bank said.

Room to Grow

“We’ve got more allowances than we need,” Blinov said. “These extra emissions should be banked for the next period” that will be regulated by a new treaty, giving Russia’s economy more room to develop, he said yesterday evening in the interview.

Economic growth is easier for a nation when it has more room to increase emissions of carbon dioxide. CO2, the main gas blamed for global warming, is commonly released from steel factories, electricity plants, cars and buses.

Russia’s air pollution has dropped as some of its dirtiest factories closed after the former Soviet Union broke up. Ukraine and Poland are also headed for credit surpluses, UN data show.

Blinov declined to estimate the number of spare allowances Russia will have through 2012. “We have a financial crisis, and nobody knows when we will get rid of the consequences of this financial crisis.”

Pollution Drop-Off

Russia’s Kyoto target was to match its average annual emissions in the measurement period compared with 1990, a goal it will easily meet, the World Bank and carbon analysts have predicted. As of 2006, output of the gases in Russia had fallen 34 percent from 1990, according to the UN.

A United Nations certified emission reduction for December, a CO2 allowance similar to a Kyoto credit, was little changed at $14.05 ($17.76) euros a metric ton on the European Climate Exchange as of 5:22 p.m. in London.

Fages forecast CERs at 25 euros a ton for the five years through 2012, or 77 percent more than today’s level. If Russia kept the 300 million credits off the market that Fages said he assumed would be offered, it would push CER prices higher than his target, he said.

Refusing to sell the assigned amount units under the Kyoto treaty, will shrink the potential pool of CO2 licenses that might be bought by nations such as Italy or Spain, which are headed to exceed their credits granted under Kyoto.

The 1997 treaty gave the 37 nations emissions targets. Each must buy credits or similar permits for each ton of CO2-equivalent they release in excess of their limits. CO2 equivalent is a unit of measurement that includes carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases regulated by Kyoto.

Natural Gas Sales

Russia, the world’s biggest natural-gas producer, may withhold AAUs because it won’t want an oversupply in the carbon market. A lower emissions price makes it relatively cheaper for power utilities to burn coal instead of cleaner-burning natural gas, which needs about one-half the permits.

“Russia won’t flood the carbon market because low carbon prices reduce the demand for gas versus coal,” said Gilles Corre, a carbon broker at Tullett Prebon in London.

A lower credit supply from Russia may help boost prices achieved in AAU sales by other nations including Latvia, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Hungary, Anthony Hobley, head of climate change and carbon finance at law firm Norton Rose LLP in London, said today by e-mail.

Delegates from 190 countries are meeting in Poznan, Poland, through Dec. 12 to lay the groundwork for signing a new treaty by next December to stem global warming.

Ecodefense, an environmental lobby group funded by donations, said it wanted Russia’s delegation to focus on curbing emissions rather than working out ways to soften future targets.

“We don’t like all this playing with numbers,” Vladimir Slivyak, co-chairman of the group, said today by phone from the talks. The nation can afford to keep emissions at 2005 levels in 2020 without use of spare AAUs, Slivyak said.

To contact the reporters on this story: Alex Morales in Poznan, Poland, via amorales2@bloomberg.netMathew Carr in London at m.carr@bloomberg.netKatarzyna Klimasinska in Poznan at kklimasinska@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: December 3, 2008 14:06 EST