Article 16Closure of operator holding accounts
1.The competent authority shall notify the registry administrator within 10 working days of a greenhouse gas emissions permit being revoked or surrendered for an installation that is, as a result, not covered by any such permit. Without prejudice to paragraph 2, the registry administrator shall close all operator holding accounts relating to that revocation or surrender using the account closure process between 1 May and 30 June the year after the revocation or surrender took place if the relevant installation's compliance status figure for the latest year is greater than or equal to zero. If the relevant installation's compliance status figure is less than zero, the registry administrator shall close its account the working day after the entry is greater than or equal to zero or on the working day after the competent authority has instructed the registry administrator to close the account because there is no reasonable prospect of further allowances being surrendered by the installation's operator.
2.If there is a positive balance of allowances or Kyoto units in an operator holding account which the registry administrator is to close in accordance with paragraph 1, the registry administrator shall first request the operator to specify another account within the registry system to which such allowances or Kyoto units shall then be transferred. If the operator has not responded to the registry administrator's request within 60 calendar days, the registry administrator shall transfer the allowances to the national allowance holding account and the Kyoto units to a Party holding account.
3.Where the competent authority has notified the registry administrator of the revocation or surrender of a greenhouse gas emissions permit belonging to an installation related to an account which has an entry in the relevant national allocation plan table submitted in accordance with Article 38, the registry administrator shall, prior to closing the account, propose to the Central Administrator the following changes to the national allocation plan table:
(a)deleting from the national allocation plan table any allowances allocated to the installation in the national allocation plan table that have not yet been transferred to the operator holding account of the installation;
(b)adding an equivalent number of allowances to the part of the national allocation plan table representing the quantity of allowances not allocated to existing installations.
4.The proposal shall be submitted to, and checked and implemented automatically by the CITL using the national allocation plan table update for closure process