Alkagesta has added European Union Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) allowances to its carbon trading offering, giving clients a single desk for allowance trading, carbon credits and physical fuel supply. The Malta-headquartered trading house said the scheme's reach well beyond the borders of the European Union — it captures any company operating in or dealing with the territory — was central to the decision, given that Alkagesta trades across global markets from hubs in Malta, Singapore, Turkey and Romania.
The EU ETS has operated since 2005 across power generation and energy-intensive industry, and was extended to shipping in January 2024, obliging operators calling at European ports to surrender allowances against verified emissions from the previous year. Alkagesta said it also intends to cover ETS2, the expanded scheme that brings fuel suppliers into scope for emissions from road transport and buildings later this decade, pulling a much larger population of smaller businesses into compliance obligations.
The trader's product book spans biofuels, Brent crude, naphtha, jet fuel and fertilizers, and it moved into aviation fuel supply earlier this year through an arrangement to use the NATO CEPS pipeline network in Europe. Placing allowances next to that physical business is a deliberate bet that compliance buyers increasingly want one counterparty across both sides of the carbon equation rather than separate relationships for paper and product.
"Trading EU ETS allowances alongside our CORSIA-eligible SAF and biofuels business means we can support clients across a much wider set of carbon obligations from one desk," said Anthony Guida, Biofuels Trading Desk Lead at Alkagesta. "As ETS2 brings smaller businesses into scope and ReFuelEU blending requirements ramp up, having a single trading partner across allowances, credits and physical fuel supply is becoming increasingly valuable, and we're well placed to support that shift."
The timing lands in the middle of a live European argument about how far the scheme should go. ETS2 is being debated against a backdrop of concern over industrial competitiveness and energy costs, while ReFuelEU Aviation ratchets up sustainable aviation fuel blending mandates at EU airports — a combination that steadily widens the overlap between allowance markets and the physical barrels traders already move. For shipowners and charterers, the practical consequence is that carbon cost is becoming a line item to be hedged and procured, not merely reported.
