The European Commission has published its long-awaited Clean Industrial Deal. Besides the installation of 100 GW per year of renewable electricity till 2030 and over €100 billion ($105 billion) financing to support low-emission manufacturing, this will include a voluntary carbon intensity label for steel products starting from 2025.
The plan focuses on six core business drivers: affordable energy, lead markets, financing, circularity and access to materials, global markets and international partnerships, skills enhancement, and simplification, Kallanish notes.
The Affordable Energy Action Plan will lower energy costs, also tackling volatile prices by making Power Purchase Agreements more attractive for industrial users.
The EU will introduce sustainability, resilience and European preference criteria in EU public procurement for strategic sectors, aiming to reach 40% of domestically produced key components of clean tech products on the EU market.
The Industrial Decarbonisation Accelerator Act will develop a voluntary label on the carbon intensity of industrial products, while avoiding duplication, based on a simple methodology with ETS data and building on the CBAM methodology. The Commission will start with steel in 2025, based on existing reporting from industry. The labels “will allow industrial producers to distinguish the carbon intensity of their industrial production and to benefit from targeted incentives,” the Commission says.
The Commission will simplify state aid rules to give Member States more flexibility to support decarbonisation. An Industrial Decarbonisation Bank, aiming for €100 billion in funding, will be based on available funds in the Innovation Fund, additional revenue resulting from parts of the ETS as well as the revision of InvestEU.
It wants to ensure lower prices and higher availability for critical raw materials by organising joint purchases – through an EU Critical Raw Material Centre. It is also eyeing increasing the circular material use rate from 11.8% today to 24% by 2030.
The Circular Economy Act in 2026 will enable the free movement of circular products, secondary raw materials and waste. It will provide incentives to increase the use of metal scrap and mandatory digitalisation of demolition permits and pre-demolition audits.
The Commission also wants to give European companies better access to third markets and essential inputs via trade agreements and Clean Trade and Investment Partnerships, which will diversify sources of supply.
A new Union of Skills will meanwhile ensure a skilled workforce for strategic industries, promote quality jobs and support workers in transition.
Lastly but crucially, regulation will be simplified. The aim is to speed up permitting for industrial decarbonisation projects, simplify state aid rules by 2025 to accelerate clean energy roll-out and support industrial decarbonisation, and enhance coordination between EU and national policies to reduce red tape and leverage the scale of the Single Market.
“Today, Europe accelerates on its twin decarbonisation and reindustrialisation. This pact aims to position Europe as a world leader in clean industries – from boosting our production ‘made-in-Europe’, to beefing up regulatory and financial support to our most strategic industrial supply chains. It also secures our unique European model of setting decarbonisation not only as an environmental goal, but also as our economic growth strategy,” says Stéphane Séjourné, Executive Vice-President for Prosperity and Industrial Strategy.
Adam Smith Poland
