Spot prices for CORSIA-eligible credits jumped within days, as policymakers eased planned quality rules for the scheme’s first compliance phase and extended its role in international aviation policy through to 2035. The moves reverse months of uncertainty over whether the scheme’s largest carbon market would tighten its rules further or step back from it altogether.
A passenger aircraft taking off from an international airport as other aircraft wait on nearby taxiways. AI generated picture.
The European Commission set out the changes on 17 July 2026, as part of a wider package of reforms to the EU Emissions Trading System (EU ETS). Credits used during CORSIA’s first compliance phase, covering emissions from 2024 to 2026, are exempt from the additional quality criteria the Commission had proposed earlier in the year. Tighter requirements remain planned for the second phase, which begins in 2027. The Commission described the change as “a constructive gesture of goodwill” aimed at winning broader support for the reform this autumn. The proposal also embeds CORSIA into EU law through 2035, extending the mechanism that lets airlines deduct CORSIA credit costs from their EU ETS obligations, avoiding a double charge for the same emissions.
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The proposal also narrows an earlier threat to CORSIA. Rather than extending the EU ETS to cover all flights leaving Europe from 2029, as previously floated, the Commission opted for a smaller carbon-pricing zone: flights to destinations within 5,000 kilometres of Frankfurt, effective from 2029 for four years. That radius excludes the world’s largest long-haul aviation markets, including North America, East Asia, and South America. A review due by 1 July 2032 will decide whether the zone narrows further, contingent on CORSIA lifting its coverage of international aviation emissions above 70%. Separately, a lower exemption threshold brings private jets and smaller airlines into carbon pricing for the first time.
Buyers read both decisions as a vote of confidence in CORSIA. Spot prices for the scheme’s first-phase credits climbed from $9.70 to $11.60 per tonne of carbon dioxide equivalent (tCO2e) within a week of the announcements. Locking CORSIA into law until 2035 narrows rather than abandons the wider carbon-pricing threat, giving buyers and credit suppliers a longer horizon to plan around. It also keeps pressure on other participating countries to raise their own ambition, since the 2032 review offers a concrete reward, a smaller carbon-pricing zone, for doing so.
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The debate over CORSIA’s credit-quality rules is a reminder that the standards behind every credit shape how much a market can be trusted. Green Earth develops large-scale, nature-based carbon projects accredited to leading international standards, with full oversight of every stage of the project lifecycle — from design and implementation through to long-term monitoring and credit issuance. Our projects restore ecosystems, strengthen biodiversity, and improve community livelihoods, delivering verified environmental impact that stands up to scrutiny. For businesses meeting their environmental goals under frameworks, that integrity is what counts.
