Plunge In Pollution Cost Is Hindering a Key Green Ambition (1)

The world’s biggest carbon market is joining the long list of victims of the economic fallout from the coronavirus.

The price of certificates allowing companies to emit carbon dioxide in the European Union has crashed by 40% so far this year, including two drops of more than 10% in the past week. That has erased two years of gains in the market that was worth more than 200 billion euros ($215 billion) last year, when prices were buoyed by ambitious EU climate goals and reforms that had tightened the number of permits that could be sold.

As governments across...