Brussels, 18/05/2015 (Agence Europe) - Emissions of greenhouse gases from installations participating in the EU Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) are estimated to have decreased by about 4.5% last year, according to the information recorded in the Union Registry and published by the European Commission on Monday, 18 May.
The EU ETS covers more than 11,000 power plants and manufacturing installations in the 28 EU Member States, Iceland, Norway and Liechtenstein, as well as emissions from airlines flying between European airports. Verified emissions of greenhouse gases from stationary installations amounted to 1,812 million tonnes of CO2-equivalent in 2014. These emissions were about 4.5% below the 2013 level.
The cumulative surplus in emission allowances has been slightly reduced from around 2.1 billion to some 2.07 billion for the 2014 compliance year. In 2014 auction volumes were reduced by 400 million allowances due to the start of the implementation of the back-loading measure, which postpones the auctioning of these allowances.
As a whole, companies' level of compliance with the EU ETS rules was again high. Less than 1% of the installations that reported emissions for 2014 did not surrender allowances covering all their emissions by the deadline of 30 April 2015. These installations are typically small and together account for less than 0.5% of emissions covered by the EU ETS. A small number of installations - accounting for less than 0.2% of emissions in the previous year - did not report their 2014 emissions by 30 April 2015 according to registry data.
Verified CO2 emissions from aviation activities carried out between airports located in the EEA amounted to 54.9 million tonnes of CO2 in 2014, an increase of 2.8% compared to 53.4 million tonnes of CO2 in 2013. The level of compliance with the EU ETS rules is high: aircraft operators responsible for 99% of aviation emissions covered under the EU ETS comply. This includes more than 100 commercial aircraft operators based outside the EU, which operate flights within the EEA.
The total number of international credits exchanged into allowances since the exchange function became operational in March 2014 amounts to 388.44 million. Of these, 195.91 million were Certified Emission Reductions (CERs) and 192.53 million were Emission Reduction Units (ERUs). The CERs and ERUs exchanged came from projects taking place in a limited number of countries, with almost 77% of CERs originating from China and almost 77% of ERUs exchanged coming from projects in Ukraine. (Lionel Changeur)