BRUSSELS — The European Commission on Monday rejected calls from more than a dozen member states to postpone the start of a carbon price on heating oil, natural gas and gasoline, saying the new emissions trading system would begin on Jan. 1, 2027, as scheduled, but with a hard price ceiling for its first three years.
The decision ends months of lobbying by governments led by Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary, which argued that the scheme, known as ETS2, would push up household bills just as energy prices were stabilizing after the shocks of 2022. The commission said allowances would be sold at auction with a cap of 45 euros per ton of carbon dioxide through 2029, after which a market stability mechanism would release extra allowances whenever prices rose above a trigger level.
At 45 euros, the price would add roughly 10 euro cents to a liter of gasoline and about 9 cents per cubic meter of natural gas, officials said, increases that fuel suppliers rather than consumers will pay directly but are expected to pass on. The system covers emissions from buildings and road transport, which together account for about 40 percent of the bloc’s greenhouse gases and have been largely untouched by the existing carbon market for power plants and heavy industry.
“Delay was never free,” said Marie-Laure Duchamp, a senior official in the commission’s climate directorate, who briefed reporters on the decision. “Every year without a price signal is a year of gas boilers installed that will still be burning in 2045. The ceiling gives households certainty. The start date gives investors certainty.”
Poland had sought a delay to 2030 and a cap of 30 euros. Katarzyna Nowicka, a deputy minister in Poland’s energy ministry, called the decision “a political mistake dressed as a technical one.” About 40 percent of Polish homes are heated with coal or oil, and the government estimates the carbon price will cost an average household 600 zlotys, about 140 euros, per year. “The social climate fund will cover part of this for the poorest,” she said. “It will not cover the plumber in Radom who heats with coal and earns too much to qualify.”
That fund, financed by ETS2 auction revenue, is to distribute about 87 billion euros between 2026 and 2032 for heat pumps, insulation, electric vehicles and direct payments to vulnerable households. Member states had to submit spending plans by June; the commission said on Monday that nine had yet to do so.
Analysts said the price cap had defused the immediate political fight at the cost of the system’s ambition. “A 45-euro ceiling is a carbon price that is designed not to bite,” said Dr. Pieter Vermeulen, an energy economist at the Bruegel research institute in Brussels. “It will raise money. It will not, on its own, change how anyone heats their home. The heavy lifting still has to come from the fund and from national building rules.” He noted that the commission’s own modeling had assumed a price of 60 to 80 euros to meet the 2030 emissions target for buildings.
Germany, which has run its own national carbon price on heating and fuel since 2021 and will fold it into the E.U. system, backed the decision. The French government said it would use the fund to extend its subsidized heat-pump program to 400,000 households a year. In Warsaw, Ms. Nowicka said Poland would “examine all legal options,” a phrase diplomats said likely meant a challenge at the European Court of Justice that would take years to resolve, by which time the price would be in force.
A version of this article appears in print on Oct. 12, 2026, Section A, Page 3 of the European edition with the headline: E.U. Holds Firm on 2027 Start for Carbon Price on Heating and Driving, Despite Pleas to Delay.
