The European Commission has proposed the Net-Zero Industry Act to scale up manufacturing of clean technologies in the EU and make sure the Union is well-equipped for the clean-energy transition.
The initiative was announced by President von der Leyen as a part of the Green Deal Industrial Plan.
The Act seeks to strengthen the resilience and competitiveness of net-zero technologies manufacturing in the EU, and make our energy system more secure and sustainable. It aims to create “better conditions to set up net-zero projects in Europe and attract investments, with the aim that the Union’s overall strategic net-zero technologies manufacturing capacity approaches or reaches at least 40% of the Union’s deployment needs by 2030”.
President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, said: “We need a regulatory environment that allows us to scale up the clean energy transition quickly. The Net-Zero Industry Act will do just that. It will create the best conditions for those sectors that are crucial for us to reach net-zero by 2050: technologies like wind turbines, heat pumps, solar panels, renewable hydrogen as well as CO2 storage. Demand is growing in Europe and globally, and we are acting now to make sure we can meet more of this demand with European supply.”
By drawing on the lessons learnt from the Covid-19 pandemic and the energy crisis sparked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, it wishes to help increase the resilience of Europe’s clean energy supply chains.
The proposed legislation addresses technologies that will contribute to decarbonisation. These include: onshore wind and offshore renewable energy, geothermal energy, electrolysers and fuel cells, biogas/biomethane, carbon capture, sustainable alternative fuels technologies, advanced technologies to produce energy from nuclear processes with minimal waste from the fuel cycle, and related best-in-class fuels.
