How the EU Industry Can Move Towards its Climate Neutral Future

• Florence School of Transnational Governance
• STG Climate

Low-CO2 materials are indispensable to reach EU and global climate targets. This will require to deploy new breakthrough technologies that ultimately can transform towards low-carbon products and production. Technologies exist or will are expected to exist soon. The challenge is their wide-spread deployment.

Deployment of low-CO2 materials technologies represent an economic opportunity for European industry, tapping into a growing market for climate neutral steel, chemicals and cement as has been highlighted for example in the EU’s Industrial Strategy. In order for this to happen, the EU needs to address existing challenges: final investment decisions are still pending for almost all of the announced low-CO2 plants in all sectors, due to lack of end markets, required infrastructure, and insufficient innovation support.

The High-Level Policy Dialogue (HLPD) will discuss tools to support large-scale deployment of low-carbon technologies for materials such as Carbon Contracts for Differences (CCfDs), zero-carbon benchmarks, Green Public Procurement, standards and more. It will focus on the EU policy framework, thereby highlighting synergies of policy instruments to ensure coherence, avoiding overlapping policies to increase visibility so that EU industry can attract growth money for clean tech investment.

Attendance at this event is by invitation only and all deliberations will take place under the Chatham House rule (no views or positions may be attributed publicly to any participant). Following the recommendations that come out of the discussion, the organisers will publish a policy brief as part of their public mission.