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Annual Auction

Allowance Trading

Once a year, EPA auctions a certain number of SO2 allowances at the end of March. Utilities, environmental groups, allowance brokers, and anyone else interested in purchasing allowances can participate. Allowances sold at the auctions will be sold to the highest bidder until no allowances remain. Successful bidders are notified and are listed on our Web site.

To bid in the EPA auctions if you are not an affected utility:

  1. Open a general allowance account in EPA's Allowance Tracking System, our database of all allowance holdings and transactions. Use the Allowance Account Information form
  2. Submit a Bid Form and a certified check or an EPA Letter of Credit Form, or a wire transfer of funds. Current-year forms are available below around the end of January each year.

Please note that if you open a general account in our Allowance Tracking System, we must maintain your account in perpetuity, no matter how few allowances it holds. Therefore, please ensure that your Authorized Account Representative is someone we can keep in touch with, and please notify us of when representatives and contact information change.

For more information on EPA’s SO2 allowance auction, see the Allowance Auction Fact Sheet.

EPA tracks the results of each annual auction:

A compressed (ZIP) Excel spreadsheet (MS Excel, 2.5 MB) provides auction proceeds at the unit and plant level for each year (1993 thru 2008).

 

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