Energy efficiency can boost economic growth and reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. However, the global rate of energy efficiency improvement is slowing – a trend that has implications for consumers, businesses and the environment as the adverse climate change and pollution impacts deepen. The emissions in the EU have decreased by 17% in the past decade while member countries such as Germany, United Kingdom and Poland were among the largest emitters of CO₂. This paper examines the effect of energy efficiency, proxied by final energy consumption, on CO₂ emissions in the EU using a generalized methods of moments based on a quantile regression approach. We use the Panel Quantile ARDL for inference at various quantiles and support the ARDL estimations by the 2SLS estimations for robustness checks. We use the final energy consumption data as an indicator of energy efficiency as included in the energy efficiency indicators database of the International Energy Agency and emissions for the time period spanning 1980–2018. The results indicate that energy efficiency has reduced emissions by 8.6% on average in all the quantiles. Improving efficiency in petroleum consumption will enable the EU to reduce emissions as well as improve energy security by reducing imports as per the aims of the European Green Deal and the Efficiency First Principle. We also recommend that energy efficiency policies should account for possible rebound effects, which can limit their effectiveness.

能源效率可以促进经济增长并减少温室气体 (GHG) 排放。然而，全球能效提高速度正在放缓——随着不利的气候变化和污染影响的加深，这一趋势对消费者、企业和环境都有影响。欧盟的排放量在过去十年中下降了 17%，而德国、英国和波兰等成员国是最大的 CO ₂排放国。本文研究了能源效率（以最终能源消耗为代表）对 CO _{2 的影响}使用基于分位数回归方法的广义矩方法计算欧盟的排放量。我们使用面板分位数 ARDL 进行各种分位数的推断，并通过 2SLS 估计支持 ARDL 估计以进行稳健性检查。我们使用国际能源署能效指标数据库中包含的最终能源消耗数据作为能效指标和 1980-2018 年期间的排放量。结果表明，能源效率在所有分位数中平均减少了 8.6% 的排放。根据欧洲绿色协议和效率第一原则的目标，提高石油消费效率将使欧盟能够通过减少进口来减少排放并提高能源安全。