EU carbon price · Emissions Trading System

What emitting one tonne of CO₂ costs today

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12-month low –12-month high –
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Per tonne of cement
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Per tonne of steel
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Per MWh of gas power
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How it is calculated: the price of an EU Emissions Trading System allowance, the right to emit one tonne of CO₂, converted to US dollars. The product costs use typical emissions: 0.6 t of CO₂ per tonne of cement, 1.9 t per tonne of steel and 0.37 t per MWh of gas-fired power. Updated every business day after the European market close.

What does your CO₂ really cost?

Every tonne you emit has a price.In Europe, an industrial emitter must hand over one allowance for every tonne of CO₂ it releases. This page tracks that price daily, and what it adds to a tonne of cement, a tonne of steel or a megawatt-hour of gas power.
And it only goes one way.The number of allowances shrinks every year and free allocations for industry are being phased out, while the EU’s carbon border adjustment extends the same cost to imports. The cheapest tonne of CO₂ is the one you never have to pay for again.
The storage the climate targets need

Every credible pathway to 1.5 °C or well below 2 °C relies on capturing and permanently storing billions of tonnes of CO₂ every year. Today, the world stores about 64 million tonnes a year.

To stay on track for 1.5 °C, that has to grow roughly twenty-fold by 2030 and a hundred-fold by 2050. Even the projects already announced fall far short.

CO₂ storage needed to hold warming to 1.5 C and well below 2 C, against what operates today To hold warming to 1.5 C the world needs about 1,200 million tonnes of CO₂ stored per year by 2030 and 6,200 by 2050; to stay well below 2 C, 840 by 2030, 5,635 by 2050 and 10,409 by 2070. About 64 million tonnes a year operate today, with around 337 expected by 2030.
1.5 °C (IEA Net Zero by 2050)Well below 2 °C (IEA Sustainable Development)Operating today and projected (Global CCS Institute)
64 Mt
CO₂ captured and stored per year today, across 77 operating facilities
1,200 Mt
Needed per year by 2030 to stay on a 1.5 °C path
6,200 Mt
Needed per year by 2050: nearly a hundred times today’s capacity

Sources: IEA, Net Zero Emissions by 2050 Scenario (1.5 °C); IEA, CCUS in Clean Energy Transitions, 2020, Sustainable Development Scenario (well below 2 °C, net zero by 2070); Global CCS Institute, Global Status of CCS 2025 (operating capacity and 2030 projection).

Storage that lasts, onshore and at the emitter

Mineralisation turns CO₂ into rock, so there is nothing left to leak and nothing to monitor for centuries. It works onshore, close to the plant, without liquefaction, shipping or offshore wells, and at a fraction of the cost of offshore storage.

How our storage works

Dense or dissolved: why one well does the work of hundreds

Capturing CO₂?

Talk to us about permanent storage, priced against what the carbon would otherwise cost you.

Talk to us