After market close on 11 December, the European Commission announced that the revised auction calendar was published on EEX. The 2026 calendar is updated to account for the maritime cancellation for 2024.
This amounts to 50 million allowances, which is the cancellation by the difference between reported emissions and surrendered allowances for 2024 (cut-off data was data in the union registry 15 October) and the addition of allowances to take into account emissions from CH4 and N2O emissions in the maritime sector.
The downward revision of the auction volume means weekly auction volumes are 20-21% lower compared to 2025 weekly auction volumes, dependent if there are four or five auctions per week, as shown in Figure 1.
The 2026 auctions will start with a Polish auction on Wednesday 7 January.
REPowerEU volumes makes up a sizable amount of the scheduled auctions in 2026. Each EU Common auction will carry 0.95 million REPowerEU allowances, 35% of the daily EU Common auction volume. The EU Common auctions are conducted three times per week.
So far, since the start in July 2023, REPowerEU funding from the sale of EU allowances has raised some 14.7 billion euros or 74% of the budgeted 20 billion euros. The current EEX auction calendar for 2026 schedules sales to continue until the end of August 2026 but most likely the monetary target will be met before that, in which case the designated REPowerEU volumes will immediately stop coming to the market.
With the REPowerEU funding is currently lagging behind budget, the Commission revised the planned auction volumes for 2026 higher from 58 million to a generous 93.3 million allowances with the EUA auction calendar adjustment in July 2025. This was meant to ensure that the target of 20 billion euros will be met by the end of August 2026.
If, however, the €20 bn will be amassed sooner, the REPowerEU volumes will stop being offered once the monetary target is reached. The number of allowances to be auctioned for REPowerEU funding will depend on how the auction prices develop in 2026.
Figure 2 shows how much volume will come to the market in selected 2026 EUA auction price scenarios. If the 2026 average EUA auction price is €56.9/t, all the 93.3 million scheduled allowances will need to come to the market.
The last time the auction price cleared at this low level was back on 4 April when Europe’s carbon market was rattled by tariff war. We think such a price scenario where 2026 auction price will average at a level 22% lower than in 2025 is unlikely. Veyt does not expect the full 93.3 million allowances to come to the market.
In a scenario where the auction price is the same as the 2025 average price of €73/t, 71.9 million allowances will need to be auctioned, 20.4 million less than what is currently scheduled. With a 2025 average auction price of €73/t the last auction will be mid-July.
With an average price of €90/t, some 42.1 m EUAs would be sufficient to reach the €20 bn target. That would be 50.2 million less than stipulated in the auction calendar and auctions will stop end-April.
When the REPowerEU 20-billion-euro-target is met, the weekly auction volumes will drop and will only be 42% or 45% of the 2025 weekly auction volumes as shown in Figure 3.
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