Pushing for CORSIA Success

2026 is an exciting and challenging year for aviation in carbon markets. We are now in the final year of the first phase of CORSIA and will shortly be staring down the January 2028 compliance deadline. However, a daunting amount remains to be done in the next 19 months for Phase 1 of CORSIA to reach a successful conclusion. Governments, airlines, and carbon markets are truly attempting to build a plane while flying it. 

The work to deliver CORSIA’s Phase 1 has taken on new significance considering the larger geopolitical picture. We are currently in a global moment very different from the one when CORSIA was agreed 10 years ago. The ink was still drying on the Paris Agreement in 2016, while in 2026 geopolitics have delivered setbacks to multilateral climate action under the UNFCCC and in sector specific UN bodies like the IMO. In this context, CORSIA has become a high-profile symbol of global multilateral cooperation to address climate change. Success for CORSIA is about more than just reducing and compensating a portion of international aviation emissions. It is also an important opportunity for both governments and the private sector to show that they are willing and able to take coordinated action to address aviation emissions at global scale. 

CORSIA’s success would go far to build confidence among both governments and markets that the world can follow through on a collective climate change commitment. Likewise, failure to follow through on CORSIA would damage confidence in collective action, at a minimum injecting distrust and frustration into any future negotiations to establish a revised global approach to aviation emissions. It could very well lead governments to turn to inward-looking approaches, imposing greater costs and competitive distortions on a sector that is inescapably global.

Against this backdrop, what is it going to take to arrive at a successful conclusion to Phase 1? Emissions surpassed the baseline in 2024 for the first time, putting airlines on the hook for 55.6 million tonnes[1] of emission reductions. Airlines can use either CORSIA eligible credits or CORSIA eligible fuels (SAF) to satisfy compliance obligations. Once the figures are compiled for 2025 and for 2026, compliance obligations for Phase 1 are likely to total somewhere on the order of 200 million tonnes, though the ramifications from ongoing conflict in the Middle East may moderately reduce the final tally. 

Continued limitations to the availability of CORSIA eligible fuels mean that carbon markets must rise to meet this demand. As of May 2026, some 36 million tonnes of supply are available in the market from 10 countries and three different CORSIA eligible standards.[2] On the demand side, Japan Airlines recently announced cancellation of some 180 thousand units for CORSIA, one of only a small handful of airlines to publicly declare purchases for CORSIA.[3] These figures point to a market that is real, but operating on a scale far short of what is needed. 

Unlocking the CORSIA market at scale is a challenge not only for the private sector, but also for governments. Policies to authorise supply from host countries and to enforce and clarify rules for airlines are still emerging. Resolving these legal and regulatory uncertainties would go a long way to accelerating the emergence of both supply and demand. 

One important supply bottleneck is the need for host country governments to authorise units for CORSIA use, as opposed to using the reductions to meet Paris Agreement commitments. While host country governments continue to fine tune and operationalise this process, insurance policies have emerged as an innovative market solution to bridge the time gap between Letter of Authorisation (LoA) and subsequent Corresponding Adjustment (CA). 

On the demand side, some countries have not taken action to implement CORSIA in legislation or otherwise show that they will follow through on their voluntary participation in CORSIA. The USA is at the top of this list, though US-based airlines continue to say they will comply with CORSIA. Other jurisdictions have been much more active. The EU has multiple regulations or policy proposals in the pipeline that could influence CORSIA, from potentially bespoke criteria for credit eligibility to consideration of double coverage of international routes under the EU ETS and CORSIA. As long as these files remain open, it is likely to act as a dampener on market activity from European airlines while the industry waits for certainty and assesses to what extent the EU may bifurcate the global CORSIA market. 

To this end, enabling the CORSIA market to reach maximum possible scale depends not only on how much supply exists, but also on the timing of when demand and supply arrive to the market. A frantic dash for compliance in Q4 2027 will come too late for many governments and project developers to successfully navigate the process of bringing credits to market and will leave airlines with fewer options for compliance. In this scenario, everybody loses. CORSIA’s success requires concerted collective action today, not just next year.

To help accelerate progress, IETA is taking action. Leveraging our global network of members, we are convening supply and demand side actors to resolve issues preventing the market from scaling. We are also providing capacity building to governments to help them with the authorisation and corresponding adjustment process, and are advocating for CORSIA implementation at national level in key jurisdictions around the world, emphasising the importance of a harmonised global rulebook and avoiding market bifurcation. IETA is also supporting financial penalties for noncompliance as an important piece of the regulatory puzzle. These penalties help actors price the risk of non-compliance, and when implemented widely by many governments, provide airlines reassurance that compliance will be widespread and that they can procure CORSIA units without potentially putting themselves at a competitive disadvantage to airlines in other jurisdictions. 

However, this truly is a global endeavour, bigger than any one industry organisation. It is critical that all stakeholders take steps towards making CORSIA happen today. There is a strong collective incentive to overcome headwinds such as potential US non-participation or restrictive EU rules. An overwhelming 130 countries have volunteered for this phase of CORSIA and the scheme has widespread global industry support.[4] Bold action today from even a subset of the actors involved in CORSIA will send a strong positive signal about the health and viability of a global market-based measure for aviation and demonstrate that multilateral action can still in fact be an effective force for tackling climate change. 

Now is the time to take action and show the world that there is collective will to tackle aviation emissions at global scale. 

[1] Abatable: https://abatable.com/blog/corsia-airlines-need-to-offset-58-mtco2/ 

[2] ICAO Supply Tracker: https://www.icao.int/CORSIA

[3] Gold Standard : First large-scale CORSIA retirement of Gold Standard carbon credits by a commercial airline : https://www.goldstandard.org/news/first-large-scale-corsia-retirement-of-gold-standard-carbon-credits-by-a-commercial-airline

[4] ICAO list of participating countries in 2026: https://www.icao.int/sites/default/files/environmental-protection/CORSIA/Documents/CORSIA%20Central%20Registry/CORSIA-States-for-Chapter-3-State-Pairs_6Ed_web.pdf