Europe’s Pollution Price Gets an ‘Epic’ End-of-Year Squeeze

European Union permits to pollute got a boost Wednesday that could push the permits to a record they’ve threatened to breach several times this year.

The European Commission said that auctions of the permits will be delayed until as late as early February from the typical start of January. That will extend by weeks the normal holiday period at the end of the year when governments don’t hold auctions.

“Even with the normal three-week shutdown we see upward pressure on prices. To extend that by a month is pretty epic,” Tom Lord, head of trading and risk management at Redshaw ...