EC Plans Annual 6m-Tonne CO2 Removal Purchases Starting 2031
Brussels commits to state-backed carbon removal offtake in the same reform cycle it is reshaping allowance supply — giving traders two moving parts to price simultaneously.
The European Commission intends to buy six million tonnes of CO2 removals each year from 2031 onwards, an official told Montel News, creating a public offtake commitment for carbon drawdown at a scale that the voluntary market has yet to consolidate around.
The ICE EUA Dec-rolling contract stood at €85.18/tCO2 on Friday (2026-09-11), under sustained bearish pressure since Brussels unveiled its broader ETS review in July. Analysts cut their EU carbon price forecasts for 2026 and 2027 following those proposals, Reuters reported on July 31 (2026-07-31), citing the Commission's efforts to ease expected scarcity.6
The removal procurement arrives alongside several concurrent changes to allowance supply. On July 17 (2026-07-17), the Commission proposed making the market stability reserve more dynamic and responsive to surplus conditions, and introduced an "investment booster" allocating 400 million EU allowances, worth an estimated EUR 30 billion, directed at fast-track industrial decarbonisation projects, Montel reported. The framing was explicit: Brussels is preparing for a shift from current allowance surplus to future scarcity.4
Climate commissioner Wopke Hoekstra described the planned ETS changes as "targeted improvements" designed to maintain "stable long-term signals," Montel reported in May (2026-05-21). The removal pledge adds a further element: a state-backed buyer entering a segment with no equivalent of the ETS's price discovery mechanisms, operating on a nine-year timeline.1
Six million tonnes annually is a defined commitment, but the price the Commission would pay, the contract structure, and which removal technologies would qualify are not established in the Montel report. Those unknowns are not trivial for carbon market participants trying to gauge how sovereign demand for removals interacts with compliance obligations under the reformed ETS.
The ETS reform proposal would allow high-integrity international credits to count toward up to 5% of the bloc's 90% net-emissions reduction target from 2036, according to an analysis by JD Supra published on August 11 (2026-08-11). Should those credits prove unavailable, the linear reduction factor would revert to 2.7% rather than the proposed 1.7%. That backstop limits the upside supply buffer from international offsets.5
Trading volumes in EU carbon futures grew sharply in the first half of this year regardless of near-term price direction. EEX data showed futures volumes on that exchange rose 74% year-on-year to 249.3 million tonnes in H1 2026, almost entirely EUA futures, with just 1,000 tonnes of UK allowances crossing the platform, Montel reported on Thursday (2026-07-09). ICE Endex remained the dominant venue by volume.3
One supply variable with a hard ceiling is the REPowerEU auction programme, which has placed additional allowances in the secondary market to fund the bloc's exit from Russian fossil fuels. EEX's chief executive confirmed the exchange will stop those auctions once the EUR 20 billion fundraising target is reached, Carbon Pulse reported. The timing of that wind-down will shape the secondary market supply picture well before 2031.2
The near-term read on EU carbon remains bearish: the ICE EUA Dec-rolling contract held at €85.18/tCO2 on Friday (2026-09-11), analyst forecasts have moved lower, and the broader reform package was designed in part to moderate scarcity expectations. The removal procurement changes the longer-dated picture, but only once the Commission puts terms to the pledge: technology eligibility, contract duration, and the relationship between sovereign purchases and private offtake obligations under the reformed ETS.