The Netherlands' Fortis Bank has won a bid to emit carbon dioxide in an auction that marks a new phase in the global "carbon market". The bank paid more than euros 13 million (US $18 million) for the rights to emit 800,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide. This is the first such auction held in a regulated exchange, the Brazilian Mercantile and Futures Exchange.
The credits were made available through Kyoto Protocol's clean-development mechanism. In this case, the credits were held by the city government of Sao Paulo, in recognition of a project to prevent methane escaping into the atmosphere from a massive rubbish tip in the city, the largest landfill site in Latin America. Bandeirantes landfill, at the Northern edge of the city, had grown to a 30-million-tonne mountain of rubbish by the time it filled up last year.
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