Nearly 145,000 CERs from a project owned by Korea District Heating Corporation have been cancelled with a view to be converted into Korean Offset Credits (KOCs), a UN website showed Tuesday, taking the total number of offsets to leave the UN market for South Korea’s ETS to 6.25 million.

The latest cancellation is the latest in a series of similar moves as owners of Korea-generated CERs take advantage of the option to sell their credits in the Korean market – where offsets trade at around $12 each – instead of the over-supplied UN market where CERs are valued at around €0.59.

Even though the project is owned by Korea District Heating Corporation, it was not immediately clear if the CERs belonged to the same company as the UN website did not indicate whether the credits had been subsequently sold.

“It is to be offset for domestic carbon emission trading in South Korea,” a notice on the UN website said.

Close to 2.2 million CERs have now been cancelled from the UN registry for the purpose of being converted into KOCs.

At the same time, four South Korean trading companies have cancelled a total of 4.08 million offsets from New Zealand’s emissions unit registry – Ecoeye, Korea Carbon, LG International Corp. and Y-Green.

It is unclear exactly how many of the 6.25 million have so far been converted into KOCs as the Korean market operator does not make offset issuance publicly available.

By Stian Reklev – stian@carbon-pulse.com

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