Partial Settlement - Emissions Annex Provision

EU Emissions Allowance Transaction Annex to the 2005 ISDA Commodity Definitions A Jolly Contrarian owner’s manual™ Resources and navigation Index: Click ᐅ to expand: ISDA Emissions TOC EUA Annex - Premium Emissions Pro tip: for tons of information about EU ETS and EU financial services regulation see Michał Głowacki’s magnificent emissions-euets.com website. Emissions trading documentation ISDA: EU Anatomy • EU Wikitext • EU Nutshell (premium) • UK Anatomy • UK Wikitext (to be merged into EU Anatomy) IETA: IETA Master Agreement • IETA Wikitext • IETA Nutshell (premium) EFET: EFET Allowances Appendix • EFET Allowances Wikitext • EFET Nutshell (premium) Section (d)(iii) in a Nutshell™ Use at your own risk, campers! (d)(iii) Partial Settlement If Delivering Party delivers fewer Allowances to Receiving Party on the Delivery Date than the Allowances to be Delivered (an “Allowance Shortfall”), Receiving Party’s corresponding payment obligation will be reduced proportionately and the “Failure to Deliver” provisions of this Annex will apply mutatis mutandis to the Allowance Shortfall. view template Full text of Section (d)(iii) (d)(iii) Partial Settlement If, on the Delivery Date, Delivering Party delivers to Receiving Party fewer Allowances than the Allowances to be Delivered (such shortfall the “Allowance Shortfall”), Receiving Party’s obligation to pay pursuant to Physical Settlement above shall be reduced by an amount equal to the Allowance Shortfall multiplied by either the Allowance Purchase Price (in respect of an Allowance Forward Transaction) or the Allowance Strike Price (in respect of an Allowance Option Transaction), and the provisions of “Failure to Deliver” above will apply in respect of the Allowance Shortfall (with references to Number of Allowances (in the case of an Allowance Forward Transaction) and Allowances to be Delivered (in the case of an Allowance Option Transaction) being read as references to the Allowance Shortfall). view template Comparison See our natty emissions comparison table between the IETA, EFET and ISDA versions of emissions trading docs Tell me more Sign up for our newsletter — or just get in touch: for ½ a weekly 🍺 you get to consult JC. Ask about it here.

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Summary

For the Seller doesn’t deliver the full quota of allowances to be delivered, the Buyer only has to pay the agreed strike/purchase price for those that are delivered, and the remainder of the Transaction will be closed out as if it were a Failure to Deliver. This is a bit curious — why wouldn’t it just be closed out under normal Section 6 close-out methodology and the undelivered portion be treated as an Unpaid Amount? But it probably gets to a similar place (though perhaps it pauses Section 2(a)(iii) at least until the pro-rata partial payment is made. Again; as to why, search us.

Decoupling of Phase 3 and Phase 4 Allowances: a wild guess

One possible reason — though it is unlikely and we are really reaching here — is the outside contingency of wehat we have seen described as a “Fungibility Event”: that the Seller is holding Phase 3 Allowances and they, by regulatory decree, unexpectedly become ineligible for surrender past a specified date or some such thing. (We think this is a highly remote contingency, seeing as the Allowance futures contracts don’t differentiate between Phase 3 and Phase 4, so market participants can hardly control which type of Allowances they hold, and it would be perverse and counterproductive behaviour for ESMA to suddenly deem part of the market ineligible.) But, look — no-one is denying regulators do ill-advised and counterintuitive things; so you never know.

But we don’t think that is it: for one thing, if that event happens there will almost certainly be plenty of notice. Phase 3 and Phase 4 Allowances currently trade as if fungible. They will rapidly decouple, and the best mechanism would be for Buyers — whom we expect to be end users, right? — to accelerate delivery of expiring Phase 3 Allowances so they can surrender those first. Sellers — financiers in the main — won’t wildly care as long as their funding break is taken care of. In any case having to wait until final settlement, and then being discovering tendered Allowances are worthless, seems a bit of a head-in-sand tactic.

There’s no easy solution to this, which makes us think that even if the EU regulators do such a silly thing, they will quickly change their minds when they see the resulting market confusion and dismay.

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See also

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