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Romania's current quota of carbon dioxide emission allowances could bring the country 1.2 - 1.5 billion euros by 2012, Minister of Environment and Forests Laszlo Borbely told a press conference on Wednesday.

'Romania's current quota of carbon dioxide allowances could bring the country between 1.2 and 1.5 billion euros by 2012. Unfortunately, we did not succeed in selling such allowances. We are in a one of a kind situation, although trades with such allowances could have been prepared as early as in 2000,' Borbely warned.

An increasing number of scientists and experts consider that Romania has suitable carbon dioxide storage sites and that the only thing missing is the political will to ensure the funding required for the precise identification of such sites.
European specialists have agreed that by 2050, greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) should be reduced by 85 percent at least. In early September 2009, experts of Bellona Europe, one of the most important non-governmental international environmental organizations, said that Romania holds a surplus of 200 million carbon dioxide emission allowances which could generate by 2015 about two billion euros in budget revenues, if sold.

According to Agerpres, following the Kyoto Protocol, Romania is entitled to sell the surplus of CO2 allowances.

Romania, one of the countries participating in the European carbon dioxide emission trading system, ranked ninth in the European Union in 2008 by the assigned quotas, respectively 70.65 million tons CO2 equivalent, according to European Commission data. Romania's verified carbon dioxide emissions fell in 2008 by 8.7 percent from 2007 to 63.5 million tons and the number of the country's installations rose by 3.3 percent, to 252.