EU Carbon Allowances Price

The number is captured daily from a consumer market-data aggregator's EU ETS spot page - one observation per day, single source, 83.04 euros on 2026-08-10, with records beginning 2020-01-15. The market's usual benchmark is different: quoted EUA prices in financial media are normally the ICE December futures contract, by market convention, while primary issuance happens through auctions on EEX. An aggregated spot reading tracks these closely but is not any exchange's official settlement, and applications that need a settlement print for compliance or contract purposes should source one from the exchange.

One ICE futures lot covers 1,000 allowances, each an entitlement to emit one ton of CO2-equivalent. Since the 2024 compliance year, installations surrender allowances by 30 September of the following year, a deadline moved from the historical 30 April. The system's cap declines by design: a linear reduction factor of 4.3% per year over 2024-2027 and 4.4% from 2028, with one-off rebasings of 90 million allowances in 2024 and 27 million in 2026, targeting emissions 62% below 2005 levels by 2030. A market stability reserve absorbs surplus allowances on predefined thresholds.

EUAs traded below 10 euros for most of the 2010s. The price rose past 90 euros between 2018 and early 2022, per the ECB's account of the repricing, and first crossed 100 euros in February 2023. The capture runs early each morning UTC, so a row generally reflects the previous session's close, and weekend-dated rows echo Friday. The largest recent swing illustrates this: through mid-March 2026 the series fell from 67.65 to 62.37, then printed a 6.3% recovery on a Saturday-dated row - Friday's late move arriving in Saturday morning's capture. Steps show no month-boundary pattern, consistent with a December-contract benchmark that rolls once a year rather than monthly.

It is not the UK carbon price: the UK left the EU ETS at the end of 2020 and has run its own scheme since January 2021, with its own allowance and its own price. It is not a voluntary carbon credit: offsets from voluntary registries are different instruments and have not been usable for EU ETS compliance in the current phase. And it is not a carbon tax: the price clears in a market against a fixed cap, which is why it moves daily and a tax does not.