Emissions of greenhouse gases from installations participating in the European Union Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) are estimated to be 1.8 billion tons of CO2-equivalent in 2015, decreasing by just under 0.4 percent compared with 2014, according to the information recorded in the Union Registry on Friday.

The surplus of emission allowances that has built up in the system since 2009 was considerably reduced last year as a result of "back-loading," which postponed the auctioning of 300 million allowances from 2015 to 2019-2020, combined with stable emissions. Each allowance gives the holder the right to emit 1 tonne of carbon dioxide, or the equivalent amount of two other greenhouse gases.

"The good news is that the EU ETS emissions dropped slightly last year, which confirms the decreasing trend over the last five years," said EU Climate Action and Energy Commissioner Miguel Arias Canete.

"Also, 2015 marks the first year in which the surplus shrank considerably on the European carbon market -- thanks to the back-loading of allowances. This shows that our efforts to address the serious market imbalance start to bear fruit. But back-loading is just the beginning. The Market Stability Reserve will need to complete the work," added the commissioner.

The Market Stability Reserve would start operating in less than 32 months as of January 2019 and would address the current surplus of allowances.

The Commission will publish the first surplus indicator in May 2017, which will be used to determine how many allowances would be fed into the reserve annually.

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. Enditem

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