(Montel) The European Commission plans to sell 16.5m EU ETS allowances that were due to be auctioned from 2027-2030 from July instead, it confirmed late on Wednesday.
It also clarified that extra sales of allowances from the EU’s Innovation Fund would start in 2024, with the precise volumes for that and later years to be determined as part of changes needed to the ETS Auctioning Regulation.
The EC said it expected to complete the process for updating the auctioning regulation in October, “well in time for the auctioning of Innovation Fund allowances in 2024”.
The EU agreed earlier this year to bring forward, or frontload, planned EUA auctions and sell more EUAs from the Innovation Fund to raise EUR 20bn for its RePowerEU programme. This aims to help the bloc quickly end its dependency on Russian oil and gas in response to the war in Ukraine.
The EC said that some revenues from the existing planned auctions this year of 40m EUAs from the Innovation Fund would also be used to finance the RePowerEU programme.
EU carbon prices spiked earlier this week after reports that additional sales of EUAs for RePowerEU would not begin until 2024.
The benchmark Dec 23 EUA contract rose by more than EUR 4 to an intraday high of EUR 90.85/t on Tuesday, before falling back on Wednesday to EUR 84.55/t.
