Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative carbon dioxide allowances hit a new high of $7.50/st in the final auction of 2015, held Wednesday, the cap-and-trade program's administrator said Friday.
The latest auction price came in nearly 25% higher than the previous auction in September, which also set a then record high of $6.02/st.
The auction allowance price has been trending mostly higher since the end of 2012 and has moved up close to 289% since then as the number of auction allowances in circulation continues to fall.
Wednesday's auction, which was the fourth and final auction of 2015 and the 30th overall, generated $115.3 million. Cumulative proceeds from all RGGI allowance auctions exceed $2.3 billion, according to the market monitor report from Potomac Economics.
There were a total of 51 bidders that participated in the latest auction, out of 57 potential bidders.
Bids ranged from $2.05/st to $10.01/st, while the average bid was $7.03/st and the median bid was $7.25/st, according to the report.
Bidders took home all of the 15,374,274 CO2 allowances that were for sale.
On the IntercontinentalExchange, the benchmark RGGI futures contract for December 2015 Vintage 2015 was seen trading around $7.39/st the day before the auction.
In trading on ICE Friday, December 2015 Vintage 2015 futures traded between $7.52/st and $7.62/st.
Compliance entities won 80% of the allowances in Wednesday's auction, up 2 percentage points from the previous auction. Across all 30 auctions to-date, compliance entities purchased 77% of the allowances sold, according to the report.
Under RGGI, power plant owners in nine states -- Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island and Vermont -- must buy CO2 allowances to cover their emissions.
