In early March, the School of Transnational Governance’s (STG) Climate Team convened with a range of stakeholders at the European University Institute's (EUI) Badia Fiesolana to explore how industry in the EU can move towards a carbon neutral future.
The starting point of the discussions was climate neutral materials, which are essential for achieving EU and global climate targets. Moreover, the use of climate neutral materials technologies represents an economic opportunity for European industry as it provides access to a growing market for green neutral steel, chemicals and cement. During the two-day event, participants identified tools to support the large-scale deployment of new climate neutral materials.
The Policy Dialogue took place in the context of a recently launched new project by the STG Climate team, run in collaboration with the Breakthrough Energy. The Breakthrough Energy Group, founded by Bill Gates in 2015, brings together a number of organisations which aim to accelerate innovation in sustainable energy and other technologies that reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
However, in the EU, young companies working on green technologies have so far lacked capital and support before the demonstration or commercialisation phase of their work. This often prevents them from securing the industrial policy benefits of their climate innovation efforts and increases the risk that promising companies will move to North America or Asia to scale up. This is where the new STG project “The Future of Climate Neutral Industry in the EU” will come in. The STG climate experts will elevate the demand for climate neutral materials to a policy issue and develop a concrete proposal for a European framework to accelerate the uptake of climate neutral materials. In addition, the project members will work towards building a coalition of member states in support of the proposal, involve worker representatives and locally affected governments, and conduct a limited number of media briefings.
The project is coordinated by EIB Climate Chair Professor Jos Delbeke and Senior Research Fellow Christian Egenhofer and will run until the end of 2022. Two policy briefs on this topic will be published in the weeks ahead.
Check out the project webpage.