*Since the date of this news item’s publication, the organization ‘The International REC Standard Foundation’ has changed to ‘The International Tracking Standard Foundation: Founder of I-REC (I-TRACK Foundation).’

The first quarter of 2023 continues to show growth in the I-REC(E) Product Code for both the issuance and redemption of certificates.

Total issuance went up over 30% from about 55 million certificates issued in Q1 of 2022 to 73 million in Q1 of 2023. The first quarter is historically also busy with redemptions as corporates are working on their reporting of the previous year, and this year is no different. Redemptions went up 65% from 36 million certificates in Q1 of 2022 to 60 million in Q1 of 2023. This means that the number of redemptions in the first three months of 2023 is over half of the total redemptions that took place in the whole of 2022, which was 97 million.

As with many EAC markets around the world, and especially in rapidly growing markets such as the many countries that use the I-REC(E), the number of redemptions is often significantly lower than the number of issuances from the same month or year. This is largely due to the time it takes for a market player to find a suitable buyer or for transactions to be facilitated for long-term agreements. We usually see a lag of about 12 to 18 months between issuance and redemptions, which is why it is interesting to compare the data from the same months but one year apart. As can be seen in the figure to the right, the numbers in January and March are within a few percentages of each other and the redemptions in February 2023 are even a bit higher than the number of issuances in February 2022.

All market statistics regarding issuances and redemptions are uploaded monthly to our website.