Scaling up innovative technologies for climate neutrality
During all the unprecedented disruptions of recent years, we kept our firm commitment to the European Green Deal. In record time, we adapted our European policies to the need to achieve climate neutrality in less than 30 years. RePowerEU, the Recovery and Resilience Facility, the Renewable Energy Directive, the revision of the EU Emissions Trading System, the revision of the State aid framework and lately, the adoption of a Net-Zero Industry Act – all work together towards this one goal, breaking our dependencies on fossil fuels. The steel, chemicals, cement, and other energy-intensive industries are important for all our industrial value chains in Europe. At the same time, we know that they account for 17% of greenhouse gas emissions in the EU (2019).
These industries need to become large users of renewable energies and green hydrogen to substitute the use of fossil resources – and they need to do if fast. Therefore, a broader and faster roll-out and scale-up of innovative climate-neutral technologies is paramount – the sooner, the better for the climate, and for Europe. For energy-intensive industries, energy efficiency and emissions reductions are a particular challenge. Many of the most promising technologies are still in development stages.
They need significant investments to reach production at scale by 2030 at the latest. This is the way to go – so we have a duty as policymakers to take appropriate measures for the green transition
