The commission announced on January 28 that it has started reviewing the first batch of reports, expecting the rest to arrive in the coming days.
“The commission notes the existence of a broad consensus that security should take precedence over speed in determining when national registries can resume business,” the commission’s climate action division said in a statement.
The European Union’s emissions trading system has been closed for the past 12 days after its computer system was illegally accessed, resulting in the closing of five national registries within days and some carbon credit theft.
The commission said the first national registries may be able to resume normal operations in the second half of this week, provided security requirements are in place.
The commission assured carbon traders that national emissions registries will resume trading as soon as their status reports show they are applying minimum security requirements set by the commission.
The commission said it will continue to provide updates on the reopening of each national registry. It said that no registry will be reactivated unless it is announced on their Web site at least 24 hours in advance.
Czech registry closed until March
Jos Delbeke, director general of the European Commission’s climate action division, was right when he said last week that no more than half of the 27 national registries are likely to reopen on January 26.
For instance, OTE, the private company operating the Czech Republic’s national carbon registry, announced that the nation’s registry would be offline for «at least six weeks,» in a statement published on their Web site in January 27.
OTE said its priority is to trace all stolen allowances and return them to the original account holders, and restore confidence in trading.
The registry published a list of serial numbers for the carbon credits that were reported stolen. The serial numbers allow other market participants of the bloc’s emission trading scheme to check if they possess any of them.
The list shows a total of 1.306 million tons of carbon credits that were the subject of illegal transactions in the Czech registry.
«The stolen allowances shall be found thanks to these serial numbers. Some of them have been found in registries in Germany and Estonia,» OTE said in a statement.
Last week, carbon trading company Blackstone Global Ventures said at least 475,000 metric tons of carbon credits had gone missing from a client.
The commission said up to 2 million carbon credits, worth nearly 30 million euros ($40.84 million), were illegally transferred out of certain accounts. The figure still stands, although the commission has not given a list of stolen credits.
