The Czech Republic's national carbon credit contract registry will be offline until at least March, the private company operating the electronic facility said in a statement Friday.
Czech registry operator OTE said the nation's emissions credit registry, used by companies in the country that trade carbon contracts in the EU Emissions Trading System, would be offline for "at least six weeks."
The registry was turned off last week by OTE after a carbon trading company in the Czech Republic called Blackstone Global Ventures said that at least 475,000 metric tons of carbon credits had gone missing from a client with accounts in the facility.
"The Czech registry will be closed until the situation will be resolved and the acceptable solution will be found," OTE said in a statement.
The theft of the carbon credits from the Czech emissions registry prompted the European Commission to disconnect its central emissions registry from all the other member state facilities, disrupting spot trading of EU Allowances and UN Certified Emission Reductions in the ETS.
EC spokeswoman Maria Kokkonen said Monday the commission estimated that around 2 million mt of carbon credits were stolen last week by computer hackers illegally accessing several EU member state emissions registries, including the Czech Republic facility.
The EC was due to reconnect its central registry with the member state platforms January 26, but many of the registries did not link their systems with the EC facility due to EU and commission concerns about the electronic security of several of the member state platforms. Czech Republic-based electricity utility CEZ said Thursday that it recently uncovered two unauthorized transactions of carbon credits totaling 700,000 mt from its account in the Czech emissions registry, and the company claimed that OTE "is responsible to CEZ" for the security of the accounts in the electronic platform.
Also Thursday, OTE published a list of serial numbers for the carbon credits that were reported stolen. The serial numbers allow EU ETS market participants to check if they are in possession of any stolen credits.
The list shows a total of 1.306 million mt of EUAs were the subject of illegal transactions in the Czech registry. The document can be accessed at www.ote-cr.cz.
"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 Friday. "Our current priority is to trace all stolen allowances for their return to the original account holders and restore confidence in emissions trading."
Switzerland-based carbon trading industry group the International Emissions Trading Association said in a statement Friday that the EC should "urgently and thoroughly" close "security gaps" in the EU emissions registry system.
"IETA deplores the lack of attention paid to enhancing registry security despite last year's phishing attacks and despite repeated warnings," IETA CEO and President Henry Derwent said.
"While the safety of online banking has been scaled up, EU Member States have failed in protecting a Eur80 billion ($110 billion) market thereby undermining the EU's main tool to reach climate objectives," he added.
