Certified Emission Reduction

Certified Emission Reductions (CERs) are climate credits (or carbon credits) issued by the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) Executive Board for emission reductions achieved by CDM projects and verified by a DOE under the rules of the Kyoto Protocol. CERs can be used by Annex 1 countries in order to comply with their emission limitation targets or by operators of installations covered by the European Union Emission Trading Scheme (EU ETS) in order to comply with their obligations to surrender EU Allowances, CERs or Emission Reduction Units (ERUs) for the CO2 emissions of their installations. CERs can be held by governmental and private entities on electronic accounts.

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CERs are split into long-term (lCER) or temporary (tCER), depending on the likely duration of their benefit.

Presently, most of the approved CERs are recorded in CDM Registry accounts only. It is only when the CER is actually sitting in an operator's trading account that its value can be monetized through being traded. The UNFCCC's International Transaction Log has already validated and transferred CERs into the accounts of some national climate registries^[1] , although European operators are waiting for the European Commission to facilitate the transfer of their units into the registries of their Member States.