2013 auction calendars for general allowances announced

EEX and ICE have today published their calendars for the auction of general allowances in 2013.

The total quantity of 818,855,500 allowances is based on a conservative working estimate of the number of allowances to be auctioned under the cap for 2013. It also deducts, among others, 151,566,054 allowances allocated free of charge by eight Member States to certain electricity generators pursuant to Article 10c of the ETS Directive. The total is comprised as follows:

Final figures for the cap and auction volumes are contingent on outstanding decisions for phase 2 and 3 implementation aspects (e.g. left-over allowances in phase 2 new entrant reserves, final phase 3 numbers) and may therefore differ from this estimate. At this time, the calendars do not take into account the Commission's draft amendment of the Auctioning Regulation for 'back-loading' 400 million allowances from the 2013 budget. The calendars will be modified accordingly for the remainder of the year following an adoption of this draft amendment.

In addition to deducting the 151,566,054 allowances allocated free of charge pursuant to Article 10c of the ETS Directive, 60 million allowances - half of the 120 million from "early auctions" in 2012 - have been deducted pursuant to Article 10(2) of the Auctioning Regulation. The volume to be auctioned by EEX in 2013 as the common auction platform is increased by 30,298,500 allowances carried over from 2012 since they could not be auctioned as the arrangements between the EEX and the auctioneers were not yet in place.

The calendars have been closely coordinated between the Commission, the Member States and the auction platforms.

Any difference between the volumes established in today's auction calendars and the final figures determined pursuant to Article 10(1) of the ETS Directive will be taken into account in an update no later than July 2013. These calendar updates would also take into account any back-loaded amounts for 2013, if a decision on the back-loading proposal has been made in the meantime by Council and Parliament.

Aviation allowances

In view of the Commission's proposal to defer the enforcement of the requirement for aircraft operators to surrender allowances for emissions in 2012 for flights into and out of Europe, the 2013 auction calendars for aviation allowances are not expected to be determined before January 2013. On 16 November, the remaining auctions for 2012 aviation allowances were put on hold. Once the Commission’s proposal is agreed, the volume that was originally scheduled for these auctions will be adjusted and will be auctioned in February to April 2013. The auctions of phase 3 aviation allowances will start from May 2013.

Read more:

• ETS Auctioning
• EEX's webpage
• ICE's webpage
• Auctioning website of the German Emissions Trading Authority
• Auctioning website of the United Kingdom Department for Energy and Climate Change