Auctioning revenues in the European Union Emissions Trading System are likely to increase in the future. This projection is driven by recent changes within the system’s framework, which address the current surplus of emission allowances and reduce the overall cap. Considering a growing amount of auctioning revenues, it becomes even more important to assess the use of these revenues and their potential contribution to accelerate decarbonisation efforts. We argue that strategic investments in energy efficiency programmes provide opportunities for realising multiple benefits: additional emission reductions from both ETS and non-ETS sectors, lower economic and societal decarbonisation costs and support for the political process to further tighten the ETS cap. Our assessment of the status of auctioning revenue use at the EU Member State level shows that Member States have made only limited use of these multiple benefits in recent years. In 2017, no more than 21.4% of total revenues have been strategically invested in energy efficiency programmes, as Member States have officially reported to the European Environment Agency’s reporting obligations database. However, efficiency programmes funded by auctioning revenues in Germany and Czech Republic present promising cases for the strategic use of auctioning revenues. We conclude that the EU carbon price can provide important signals to investors and energy users, but auctioning revenues can also be a powerful tool in the energy transition and the strategic use of revenues needs to be accelerated in all Member States.

未来欧盟排放交易系统的拍卖收入可能会增加。这一预测是由系统框架内最近发生的变化推动的，这些变化解决了当前排放配额的过剩问题并降低了总体上限。考虑到越来越多的拍卖收入，评估这些收入的使用及其对加速脱碳努力的潜在贡献变得更加重要。我们认为，对能效计划的战略投资为实现多种收益提供了机会：ETS 和非 ETS 部门的额外减排、降低经济和社会脱碳成本以及支持进一步收紧 ETS 上限的政治进程。我们对欧盟成员国一级拍卖收入使用状况的评估表明，近年来，成员国仅有限地使用了这些多重利益。2017 年，不超过 21.4% 的总收入战略性地投资于能效计划，因为成员国已正式向欧洲环境署的报告义务数据库报告。然而，德国和捷克共和国通过拍卖收入资助的效率计划为战略性地使用拍卖收入提供了有希望的案例。我们得出结论，欧盟碳价格可以为投资者和能源用户提供重要信号，但拍卖收入也可以成为能源转型的有力工具，所有成员国都需要加快收入的战略使用。