Open study · CC BY 4.0 · EU MRV reporting years 2024–2025
The 2026 EU ETS methane bill
359 ships — 2.1% of the EEA-trading fleet — carry 78.1% of the methane cost the EU Emissions Trading System starts charging on 1 January 2026. Nothing about how those ships trade has to change for the bill to arrive: the emissions are already in the verified MRV reports their owners filed themselves. Priced at EUR 80 per tonne, the scope extension is EUR 211,649,840 a year across 16,961 ships, of which EUR 107,378,480 is methane alone.
EUR 107,378,480
New annual methane liability, EEA-trading fleet
78.1%
of it falls on 359 LNG-fuelled ships
EUR 164,040
Median methane bill per LNG-fuelled ship
3.0%
Increase on the CO2-only ETS bill
The finding: LNG was the hedge, and it is the exposure
359 ships in the 16,961-ship EEA-trading fleet report methane at more than 0.5% of their CO2 by mass — the slip fingerprint of LNG and dual-fuel combustion. They are 2.1% of the ships and 78.1% of the methane, EUR 83,862,593 of new annual cost.
LNG was adopted in large part because it lowers CO2 per tonne of fuel and so lowers an ETS bill that, until now, only counted CO2. From 2026 the slip that was outside the scope is inside it. The median LNG-fuelled ship picks up EUR 164,040 a year; the top decile picks up EUR 479,952 or more.
The direction of travel is not flat either. Between the 2024 and 2025 reporting years the fleet's in-scope methane rose from 1,087,551 to 1,342,231 tonnes CO2e, and LNG-signature ships rose from 294 to 359.
Sensitivity. Two inputs are choices rather than measurements: the EUA price and the CH4 GWP100 basis. Both are exposed above, and both scale the cost linearly — across AR4, AR5 and AR6 the methane bill moves by about ±6% and nothing else in the finding changes. In particular the concentration result is invariant: 359 ships, 2.1% of the fleet, carry 78.1% of the methane at every basis, because the split is computed on reported CH4 mass before any warming factor is applied. No engine-class or fleet-average slip factor is used anywhere in this study — CH4 is taken as each ship verified and filed it.
Where the bill lands
Reporting year 2025, priced at EUR 80 per tonne CO2e.
| Ship type | Ships | LNG-signature | CH4 cost | N2O cost | Median per LNG ship |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| LNG carrier | 406 | 250 | EUR 58,634,480 | EUR 4,786,240 | EUR 163,736 |
| Container ship | 2,372 | 22 | EUR 15,139,520 | EUR 34,116,800 | EUR 313,200 |
| Ro-pax ship | 415 | 29 | EUR 10,708,640 | EUR 10,843,360 | EUR 260,216 |
| Passenger ship (Cruise Passenger ship) | 206 | 10 | EUR 9,783,360 | EUR 6,254,720 | EUR 925,296 |
| Oil tanker | 1,999 | 4 | EUR 2,891,760 | EUR 11,709,280 | EUR 57,640 |
| Vehicle carrier | 530 | 6 | EUR 2,476,560 | EUR 2,739,200 | EUR 65,216 |
| Gas carrier | 414 | 12 | EUR 2,148,400 | EUR 1,926,160 | EUR 147,184 |
| Chemical tanker | 1,623 | 5 | EUR 1,269,840 | EUR 6,649,920 | EUR 101,744 |
| Ro-ro ship | 237 | 3 | EUR 1,060,800 | EUR 4,352,720 | EUR 137,824 |
| Passenger ship | 33 | 4 | EUR 961,440 | EUR 251,040 | EUR 261,312 |
| General cargo ship | 2,828 | 7 | EUR 892,800 | EUR 6,288,480 | EUR 74,320 |
| Other ship types (Offshore) | 514 | 3 | EUR 571,120 | EUR 2,363,200 | EUR 75,624 |
| Other ship types | 414 | 4 | EUR 523,520 | EUR 1,481,600 | EUR 124,584 |
| Bulk carrier | 4,774 | 0 | EUR 274,640 | EUR 9,091,920 | — |
Method, in full
Source: EU MRV verified emission reports (THETIS-MRV), reporting years 2024 and 2025, European Maritime Safety Agency. Every input is a published, verified figure; nothing is modelled from AIS, and no commercial register is used, so the whole study can be rerun by anyone from the free export.
- ETS scope share per ship = CO2 reportable under Directive 2003/87/EC ÷ total CO2, capped to [0, 1].
- Methane in CO2e = reported CH4 × 28 × scope share. Nitrous oxide = reported N2O × 265 × scope share. GWP100 values on the IPCC AR5 basis used by FuelEU Maritime.
- From 2026 the surrender rate is 100%, so in-scope tonnes are billed in full; no phase-in factor is applied.
- "LNG-signature" = reported CH4 greater than 0.5% of CO2 by mass. Conventional oil-fuel ships sit far below that threshold, so the classifier is insensitive to where in that gap the line is drawn.
Caveats worth stating plainly: the EUA price is an input, not a forecast, and the whole result scales linearly with it. Fleet composition changes between reporting years, so the 2024 → 2025 movement mixes new entrants with genuine emission change. Ships are classified by reported slip, not by a fuel declaration, so a small number of conventional ships with unusual reporting may be swept in and a few low-slip dual-fuel ships missed.
Reuse this
The dataset and this analysis are published under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0. Republish the figures, the table or the chart with attribution:
Full Ahead Maritime (2026), The 2026 EU ETS Methane Bill, CC BY 4.0 - https://fullaheadmaritime.com/methane-slip-ets-cost
Embed the chart
A self-contained, light iframe of the headline finding and the ship-type breakdown. Paste it into an article or newsletter. Keep the source line beneath the iframe — it is outside the frame on purpose, so the credit is visible and crawlable on your page.
<iframe src="https://fullaheadmaritime.com/embed/methane" width="100%" height="520" loading="lazy" style="border:0" title="The 2026 EU ETS methane bill"></iframe> <p style="font:13px sans-serif;margin:6px 0 0">Source: <a href="https://fullaheadmaritime.com/methane-slip-ets-cost">Full Ahead Maritime</a> · CC BY 4.0</p>Preview the embed
For journalists and editors
- The line: 359 ships, 2.1% of the EEA-trading fleet, carry 78.1% of the methane cost arriving on 1 January 2026 — and they are the ships bought partly to lower an ETS bill that only counted CO2.
- Basis: verified EU MRV filings, reporting years 2024 and 2025. No modelled slip factor, no AIS estimate, no commercial register — every input is reproducible from the free export on this page.
- Author: Georgios Zografos, Chief Engineer and serving Technical Superintendent, Full Ahead Maritime. Available for comment or to walk an editor through the derivation.
- Contact: ceo@fullaheadmaritime.com · press kit
Suggested headline: “359 ships carry 78.1% of shipping's new methane bill”. Screenshot-ready chart with the source URL on the image, plus a one-paragraph summary and the citation line:
