CBAM Certificate Index ends second quarter at €75.28 per tCO2e

The CBAM Certificate Index was calculated at €75.28 ($85.90) per tCO2e on Tuesday June 30, the final assessment in the second quarter.

The official second quarter CBAM certificate price will be confirmed and published by the European Commission on July 6.

The end-June assessment was marginally below the first quarter’s official CBAM Certificate price of €75.36 per tCO2e, meaning that importers of CBAM-covered goods faced a minimal difference in costs for material imported in the first or second quarters.

Certificate prices published by the European Commission reflect the volume weighted average (VWA) price of European Allowances (EUAs) that are auctioned in the primary market of the EU’s Emissions Trading System (ETS).

While CBAM certificates can only be purchased and surrendered from February 2027, importers into the EU will be required to use certificates that correspond to the quarter in which they were imported.

EUA prices rose steadily through the second quarter, to more than €80 per tCO2e in late June from €71.70 per tCO2e on April 2, while the market continued its recovery from the lows of less than €64 per tCO2e in mid-March. The upcoming ETS review, to be published by the European Commission in mid-July, continued to create policy uncertainty.

The Commission also proposed removing the Market Stability Reserve (MSR) invalidation mechanism at the start of April, a move which would have limited near-term consequences for supply. Fastmarkets’ research team has forecast that the total number of allowances in circulation (TNAC) would not reach its lower threshold to allow it to release extra EUAs for auction until around 2035.

How the CBAM Certificate Index works

Fastmarkets launched its daily CBAM Certificate Index and CBAM Certificate Builder prices on June 4, with data backdated to the start of January, to provide the market with a robust daily view of expect CBAM certificate costs. This gives importers and exporters the ability to price, procure and manage risk before the EU has confirmed the official certificate prices.

The CBAM Certificate Index provides a forward-looking daily assessment of the quarter’s CBAM Certificate price, combining auctioned EUA values with spot and forward EUA prices, bringing primary and secondary market data into a single actionable benchmark.

Because CBAM costs are inherently backward-looking, this forward-looking assessment allows market participants to price-in and hedge CBAM exposure from an earlier date.

Meanwhile, the CBAM Certificate Builder provides a daily assessment of the VWA cost of EUA auctions completed within the current reporting period. This gives the market a transparent picture of what costs are already embedded in the final CBAM certificate price.

How does the Index compare against EUA futures?

The CBAM Certificate Index provided a robust early insight into second-quarter CBAM certificate costs, with the average daily difference to the final price just 1.76%, compared with a 3% average difference when looking at EUA futures as a proxy for CBAM certificate costs.

As the quarter progressed, the nature of the Index meant that it slowly provided a more accurate view of final costs. In May-June, the daily Index was less than 1% from the final certificate price while, during the final two weeks of the quarter, the Index was an average of just 0.05% from the final price. Those looking at EUA futures only would have overestimated final costs by 6.61%.

The first quarter told a similar story and showed that, even in the face of volatile EUA pricing, the Index tracked closely to actual CBAM certificate costs throughout the quarter. During the quarter, EUAs reached highs of more than €92 per tCO2e in January before testing lows of less than €64 per tCO2e in mid-March.

In the first quarter, the CBAM Certificate Index was around €75 per tCO2e from mid-February, broadly in line with the €75.36 per tCO2e final price. But those referencing just EUA futures would have seen average values almost €5 per tCO2e below final CBAM certificate costs over the same period.

Where are third quarter costs currently sitting?

So far, just one auction has taken place this quarter, on July 2, where 2.82 million EUAs were cleared at €78.62 per tCO2e. This was an increase from the final certificate prices in the first and second quarters but represented less than 2% of the third quarter’s total volumes.

A total of just over 154 million EUAs were currently scheduled to be auctioned in the third quarter, with the VWA of these to make up the final CBAM certificate price. But auction volumes were expected to be adjusted downward in July following the publication of the TNAC figure at the end of May.

This will reduce auction volumes by 190,494,202 EUAs between September 1, 2026, and August 31, 2027.

The Fastmarkets CBAM Intelligence Suite provides the cost modelling, EU ETS price scenarios and facility-level data behind the analysis in this article. To model your own CBAM exposure by product, country and route, contact our carbon team at cbamcarbon.queries@fastmarkets.com.