Explainer: The EU’s Green Deal Industrial Plan

(Energy Post, 16 Apr 2024) Here, the Florence School of Regulation (FSR) provides a summary of the Green Deal Industrial Plan. It’s broken up into: What is the Green Deal Industrial Plan?

What are critical raw materials and why do they matter? Where is the EU currently standing on critical raw materials? What is the EU doing about critical raw materials? Where is the EU currently standing on clean tech? How is the EU attempting to boost its domestic clean tech sector? Can the EU compete with other global players? Fundamentally, the aim of the plan is to counter the EU’s import dependency for key commodities and technologies, recognising that markets will emerge or change as a result of global decarbonisation efforts. It will be done through a mix of import diversification and a massive ramp up of home-grown development and production. The three legislative initiatives aimed at securing these objectives are the reform of the EU’s electricity market, the Critical Raw Materials Act, and the Net-Zero Industry Act. This article focuses on the latter two (the EU’s electricity market reform proposal is summarised here).

While the European Green Deal’s objective of a transition to a net-zero economy should lead to a decrease in the EU’s fossil fuel imports, the rapid roll-out of many clean energy technologies required to reach carbon neutrality by 2050 will lead to significant increases in demand for other resources and technologies, not all of which can be produced within the European Union. Against this background, the European Commission has developed the so-called Green Deal Industrial Plan, which aims to maintain or even enhance the EU’s competitiveness and security of supply as it pursues the European Green Deal.

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Energy Post, 16 Apr 2024: Explainer: The EU’s Green Deal Industrial Plan