California and Quebec will auction 85.5 million allowances on Nov. 17 in the WCI market’s fifth joint auction, the two governments announced late on Friday.

The quarterly sale will offer 75.1 million 2015-vintage allowances in the so-called ‘current auction’, and a further 10.4 million 2018-vintage units in the ‘advance auction’. Both will take place simultaneously, and the results will be published a week later on Nov. 24.

Floor prices for all allowances up for sale will again be set at US$12.10/C$12.08, as has been the case in the past three joint auctions.

The current auction volumes up for sale are slightly more than the 73.4 million units offered in the previous one held on Aug. 18.

Bidders scooped up all the available allowances in that auction, paying $12.52 per unit or some 3.5% above the floor price.

They also bought all 10.4 million 2018-vintage allowances offered in the advance auction, which at $12.30 cleared marginally below the current auction.  That compared to the May 21 joint auction, in which 9.8 million of the 10.4 million advance allowances on offer were bought.

California has also announced it will not hold a separate auction for units from its Allowance Price Containment Reserve, which is tapped if prices rise too high.

The state government said there were no qualified applicants for the proposed Oct. 6 sale, which would have offered three tranches of 40.6 million allowances for prices of $45.20, $50.86 and $56.51 per unit.

Quebec this summer also cancelled a similar sale for 20 million reserve units that was to be held on Sep. 22.

The Canadian province’s first ‘sale by mutual agreement’ was scrapped due to a “lack of entities whose request to participate was approved,” the government said.

California and Quebec’s market linked under WCI in January 2014, and they are due to connect to Ontario’s nascent ETS once it launches.

By Mike Szabo – mike@carbon-pulse.com