Skip to main content
Climate Action
News article16 September 2013Directorate-General for Climate Action

Union Registry updates regarding international credit exchange and holdings

The European Commission expects that operators, including aircraft operators, will legally be able to exchange eligible international credits for allowances from early February 2014.

78427267web_13.jpg

The European Commission expects that operators, including aircraft operators, will legally be able to exchange eligible international credits for allowances from early February 2014.

The Regulation on international credit entitlements has been submitted to the European Parliament and the Council for their scrutiny. Provided that they raise no objections by end-October, the Commission will adopt and publish the Regulation, after which it will directly enter into force. Member States will then have one month to notify to the Commission the international credit entitlement for each of their operators in accordance with the limits set in the Regulation. These will be checked by the Commission for conformity with the legislation.

Access to the Union Registry will be suspended for a maximum of three working days in the course of January 2014 to deploy the technical functionality for the exchange. The exact dates of the downtime will be communicated in December.

Specific information for Registry users holding international credits marked pending/ineligible

A significant proportion of track 1 ERUs issued by non-EU Parties to the Kyoto Protocol have been marked as pending/ineligible pending complete information regarding ERUs issued before 2013. As this information is not publicly available, the Commission continues to pursue alternative means for the provision of the data. Once the data is provided, the status of ERUs issued before 2013 will be updated in the Union Registry where appropriate.

To allow further time for the provision of the data regarding ERUs issued before 2013, the operation described in Article 58 (3) of the Registry Regulation, whereby pending or ineligible credits will be moved to a KP account nominated by the account holder, will be delayed. An update on the timing of this operation will be made available on this website by 15 November 2013.

ERUs issued after 2012 by a non-EU Party must be certified in accordance with Article 58 of the Registry Regulation (389/2013) in order to become eligible. The Commission has received several requests in this regard and is in the process of responding based on order of receipt. Queries regarding the certification of ERUs issued after 2012 should be sent to CLIMA-Credits-Inquiriesatec [dot] europa [dot] eu (CLIMA-Credits-Inquiries[at]ec[dot]europa[dot]eu).

Background

The rules related to the holding of international credits on EU ETS accounts were implemented in the Union Registry on 18 July. Account holders can now distinguish international credits that are eligible in the EU ETS from those that are ineligible or require further steps to establish eligibility (i.e. pending) as international credits in EU ETS and EU KP accounts are marked as either eligible or pending/ineligible. Units marked as pending/ineligible include those for which further steps to establish eligibility are required.

Read more:

Details

Publication date
16 September 2013
Author
Directorate-General for Climate Action