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The level of activity through the Energy Companies Obligation (ECO) brokerage system, designed to help small firms participate in the scheme, hit rock bottom at the beginning of April.

Zero sales were registered in the first ECO brokerage auction in April. The brokerage system is designed to allow smaller firms to participate in the ECO market by selling carbon abatement projects to the energy companies through a blind auction system.

Simon Holmes, director of ECO manager Acrobat, said the fall in brokerage activity in April was due to the conclusion of an incentive scheme in March along with problems with the auction system itself.

Under the government鈥檚 planned changes to ECO, the energy firms would rack up extra credit for work done under the scheme before the end of March 2014. 鈥淚t [the deadline] will have had some impact, but tendering levels have probably been more hit by a lack of visibility,鈥� Holmes said.

He said the brokerage system did not give enough details to energy companies about whether the schemes being sold complied with the new proposed ECO rules or not, which put them off buying.

Activity through brokerage last hit zero in December 2013, just after the government first announced its plans for swinging cuts to ECO.

But it had since recovered to an average of 17 deals in every round of auctions compared with an average of 24 in the three months before the cuts were announced.