As previously announced, the European Commission released its surrender and compliance dataset this week, providing the latest overview of compliance outcomes for the 2025 reporting period via its Climate Action Portal.

Companies subject to surrender obligations handed in around 1.01 billion EUAs against their 2025 emissions, while more than 300 entities failed to fully or partially meet their surrender obligations for the year.

According to calculations by Carbon Pulse, the compliance rate among stationary installations stood at 98.5%, while S&P Global reported a lower rate of 96.9% when including all entities subject to EU ETS compliance obligations.

The difference is largely driven by higher non-compliance rates among aircraft and shipping operators. Of the 523 aircraft operators covered by the data, 53, or around 10%, surrendered insufficient allowances to fully meet their 2025 obligations.

This year’s compliance cycle also coincided with delays in the distribution of free allowances. A status table published on Sept. 24 showed that 344.38 million allowances had been transferred by that date, out of a total 444.54 million scheduled for free allocation for the 2026 period, leaving around 100 million allowances yet to be distributed.

The delays may have contributed to some of the non-compliance recorded around the surrender deadline, particularly among operators that had expected to use part of their 2026 free allocation to cover outstanding 2025 obligations, a common compliance strategy among eligible operators.