Australian National Registry of Emissions Units

The Australian National Registry of Emissions Units (ANREU) is a system designed to meet one of Australia’s commitments under the Kyoto Protocol. The Protocol requires each country with an emission reduction target to establish a national registry to ensure accurate accounting of the issuance, holding, transfer, acquisition, cancellation, retirement and carry over of Kyoto units.

The ANREU links with the international carbon market through the International Transaction Log (ITL). The ITL is managed by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Secretariat. It verifies the validity of transactions of Kyoto units including issuance, transfer, and acquisition between registries.  

Organisations or individuals that wish to hold Kyoto units in Australia are required to have an ANREU account. Read more about the Kyoto Protocol.

The Australian Government will authorise legal entities to transfer and acquire Kyoto units using the Australian National Registry of Emissions Units (ANREU). Each entity will be required to comply with the applicable provisions of the Kyoto Protocol and the decisions of the Parties to the Protocol, including the “Modalities, rules and guidelines for emissions trading under Article 17 of the Kyoto Protocol”. This decision, along with the decision “Modalities for the accounting of assigned amounts under Article 7, paragraph 4, of the Kyoto Protocol” provides the basis for the rules that underpin the operation of the ANREU.

The above decisions of the Kyoto Protocol require Australia to maintain a list of entities authorised by the Government to participate in international emissions trading and make that list available through the ANREU. Australia is also required to make certain information publicly available, and to provide a publicly accessible user interface through the internet that allows people to query and view the information.

Publicly available information will include the:

  • holder of each account;
  • type of each account (holding, cancellation or retirement);
  • commitment period with which a cancellation or retirement account is associated;
  • representatives of account holders; and
  • full name, mailing address, phone number, fax number and email address of each account holder representative.

Learn more about how to apply to open an account in the ANREU

Application pack for individuals (484 KB) (RTF 423 KB)

Application pack for non-individuals (485 KB) (RTF 423 KB)

Change of authorised representative details (264 KB) (RTF 602KB)

Application to close an account (163 KB) (RTF 332KB)

Change of account holder details (for individuals) (303 KB) (RTF 394KB)

Change of account holder details (for non-individuals) (371 KB) (RTF 367KB)

What the rest of the world is doing

Each of the developed countries required to meet binding emission reduction or limitation targets under the Kyoto Protocol must establish national registries with accounts that can be used to hold and transfer Kyoto units.

In addition to the national registries, the UNFCCC Secretariat has established a Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) registry for the issuance of CDM credits, known as Certified Emission Reductions or CERs, for distribution to national registry accounts.

Progress of the ANREU

The ANREU was initialised with the ITL – an international system that links registries from different countries - on 19 December 2008.

Formal notification for Australia to issue 2,957,579,143 AAUs was received from the ITL on 14 July 2009. Australia’s AAUs were issued into the ANREU under instruction from the Minister for Climate Change and Water, Senator Penny Wong, on 28 July 2009.

The opening of the ANREU in September 2009 to authorised parties means that organisations or individuals can apply to open accounts and participate in the domestic and international trade of Kyoto units.