On Tuesday 16 June, the European Commission published a draft implementing act containing the revised benchmark values for the 2026-2030 period of the Emissions Trading System (‘ETS’ or EU ETS). These make it possible to calculate the number of free emission allowances allocated to industry under the ETS.
Favourable opinion from a majority of Member States. This publication follows the vote by the Climate Change Committee on Monday 15 June (see EUROPE 13888/33), which delivered a favourable opinion on the Commission’s proposal to revise these benchmark values. 17 Member States voted in favour of the text, five were against and five abstained.
For the Member States, this is an essential legal basis for granting free allocations for 2026 and the following four years.
Latest changes introduced. Compared with the draft implementing act published on 11 May (see EUROPE 13866/6), before the public consultation that prompted 442 responses, several changes have been made.
The main difference introduced in the text concerns the adoption of separate legislation on alternative benchmarks (‘fallback benchmarks’), which will be incorporated into the ETS revision on 15 July.
This will aim to increase the free allocations granted to industries that do not have tailor-made benchmark values, such as certain metals, chemicals, ceramics or agri-food products, and to remove the cap on the additional allowances to be allocated to them. Moreover, this change will be retroactive and will cover allocations granted from 1 January 2026 until 31 December 2030.
Some numerical values in the annex have also been changed, either concerning the average efficiency values of the 10% best-performing installations or the benchmark values (grey cement clinker, facing bricks, pig iron).
Read the draft implementing act: https://aeur.eu/f/mdf
See the benchmark values: https://aeur.eu/f/mdg (Original version in French by Nadège Delépine)