The European carbon market traded lower for most of yesterday’s session before staging a sharp late-day rebound. The EUA Dec ’25 contract settled at €75.39—more than €2 above its intraday low—marking its highest close since mid-February.

Notably, trading volume surged to 36.5 million allowances, the highest in nearly a month and over 5 million above this year’s daily average, suggesting strong buying interest.

The late surge was fueled by reports from Montel News, which quoted officials from France’s nuclear safety authority (ASNR) saying that “French utility EDF will examine three additional nuclear reactors following the discovery of new cracks at its Civaux 2 (1.5 GW) unit.”

Back in October 2021, during a routine ten-year inspection, EDF discovered stress corrosion cracks at the Civaux nuclear plant. Similar issues were later identified at several other reactors, prompting EDF to shut down multiple units throughout 2022 and 2023. This led to a 23% drop in nuclear output and, for the first time in 42 years, turned France into a net electricity importer.

However, Sabrina Kernbichler, a power analyst at Energy Aspects, told Bloomberg, “we do not believe this would result in the same lengthy outages as in 2022,” referring to the possibility of EDF extending repairs to other reactors in the fleet.

On Friday morning, EUAs extended their late-Thursday rally, tracking a sharp surge in oil prices. Brent crude climbed as high as $78.50—up more than 13% from the previous day’s settlement—after Israel launched an attack on Iran. This marks the largest intraday increase since March 2022, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“But European equities are down, which could limit the upside for EUA prices,” said Yan Qin, a carbon analyst at ClearBlue Markets. Analysts note that since Liberation Day, the European carbon market has shown a stronger correlation with equity movements, reflecting its growing sensitivity to geopolitical developments.