Nov. 9 (Bloomberg) -- The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development agreed to cooperate with OAO Sberbank, Russia’s largest bank, to cut energy use in the nation and prepare for a potential government sale of spare Kyoto emission permits.

Russia uses about three times more energy for each unit of economic output than the U.K., India or Japan, the London-based EBRD said today in an e-mailed statement. Russia wants to reduce energy intensity 40 percent by 2020, according to the statement.

The two banks will lend an unspecified amount of money for projects that boost energy efficiency, the EBRD said. They will also develop so-called Green Investment Schemes, which govern how a nation must use funds from selling emission allowances assigned under the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, it said.

Sberbank will sell Assigned Amount Units, or AAUs, on behalf of the government, a company official said Oct. 30. Countries that emit less greenhouse gas than their limit under Kyoto can sell surplus credits to nations that are struggling to meet their target.

Russia emitted 2.2 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2007, according to a United Nations document. That compares with an “assigned amount” in the protocol of an average 3.3 billion tons a year in the five years through 2012. That may leave the country with about 5.5 billion tons of spare AAUs in the period, assuming emissions are unchanged from 2007.

The EBRD was created in 1991 to invest in former communist countries from the Balkans to Asia to help them transform their economies.

To contact the reporter on this story: Mathew Carr in London at m.carr@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: November 9, 2009 11:52 EST