Penalty or pool: why the FuelEU cost is not €2,400 per tonne

The FuelEU penalty is €2,400 per tonne of VLSFO equivalent. The figure is striking, and it is often quoted when the cost of the regulation is discussed.

In practice a minority pays it.

Four routes before the penalty

The regulation deliberately leaves a choice. A ship with an intensity deficit can bank a surplus into the following year, borrow from future years, join a pool with surplus ships, or switch to cleaner fuel.

The penalty is the fifth option and is set so that it is the worst one.

The market confirmed that immediately: in the first compliance cycle the large majority of shipowners joined pools. Pooling consistently turned out to be comparable with biofuel strategies or cheaper, and incomparably cheaper than penalties.

The pool price moves — and the indices disagree

This is where a caution is needed that is often missing. Publicly published FuelEU pool price indices differ from each other severalfold: one showed about €105 per tonne of CO₂ equivalent in July 2026, another showed €196–225 in the spring of the same year.

They measure different things, so they can neither be averaged nor substituted one for the other. If such a figure is used in a negotiation, it is essential to say which index it comes from and for which month.

Forecasts warn that prices will not necessarily stay low through the whole cycle: as the next deadline approaches, owners carrying a deficit may face a smaller supply.

What this means for the surcharge

A carrier is not obliged to tie its surcharge to its actual costs. It is a commercial price, not a one-for-one pass-through of cost.

But the gap between the two bases is enormous. If the surcharge is calculated from the penalty level while the deficit was in fact closed in a pool, the ratio between the published amount and the cost level actually incurred can be twentyfold.

What cannot be done with this

Disputing it. The surcharge is not a wrongly calculated invoice — it is a price the carrier published.

A claim on the grounds that the surcharge exceeds the carrier's costs would have no prospects.

What can be done

Ask what it is calculated from.

The question "is your FuelEU surcharge based on the penalty level or on an actual compliance strategy" is legitimate, specific and hard to sidestep. The answer — or its absence — is negotiating material for next year's contract.

In practice that means emissions surcharges are worth accumulating as a separate line by route and carrier, rather than sinking them into the overall freight amount.