The European Commission on Wednesday gave Lithuania the green light to hand out 269,475 free EU Allowances to its utilities to cover last year’s emissions, out of a maximum 486,698 earmarked to the country for 2015, the bloc’s executive said in an update posted to its website late Thursday.

With the annual Apr. 30 EU ETS compliance deadline approaching, the move means Lithuanian utilities expecting to get a share of these allowances will be able to use them against their 2015 emissions.

It also comes a day after the Commission announced that Poland had been approved to hand out 43.6 million EUAs out of its 66.7-million limit for the year.

Under Article 10c of the ETS Directive, seven mostly eastern EU member states can request free EUAs for their utilities to help the sector reduce its carbon emissions.

The countries are set a declining quota each year, but must show they have made, or have plans to make, the necessary investments against any allocations.

Lithuania’s approval leaves Bulgaria as the only country that has not yet received clearance from the Commission to hand out up to 9.7 million allowances to utilities for 2015.

The seven countries have a combined 2015 derogation limit of 114.5 million EUAs, and the six approved governments have been OK’ed to hand out a total 79.3 million, according to the European Commission data.

The balance will be available for those countries in futures years, provided they can justify their allocation.

The Commission has not yet published an update for this year’s free allocations.

By Mike Szabo – mike@carbon-pulse.com