Belgium, (Brussels Morning Newspaper) The European Commission has proposed the Net-Zero Industry Act to strengthen the green push and prepare the bloc for the energy transition.
The body reminded in a statement released on Thursday that EC President Ursula von der Leyen previously announced the initiative as part of the EU’s Green Deal Industrial Plan.
The proposal “will strengthen the resilience and competitiveness of net-zero technologies manufacturing in the EU and make our energy system more secure and sustainable,” the Commission stressed.
It added that proposed rules will help the bloc to attract investments and make it easier to implement green projects, which will speed up progress towards environmental targets.
Von der Leyen expressed the belief that the act “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,” she concluded.
Importance of job creation
Frans Timmermans, European Commissioner for Climate Action, stressed the importance of green technologies in the transition towards carbon neutrality and pointed out “clean tech is a booming market and the more we enhance our competitive advantage the more quality jobs can be created in Europe.”
“In the global race to net zero, we want to put EU industry in the best possible position to compete,” he added and concluded, “today’s proposals do just that.”
European Commissioner for Competition Margrethe Vestager pointed out that new rules are aimed at supporting the development of “projects in key sectors such as batteries, solar cells, hydrogen, and wind turbines as well as all other projects in the connected value chains.”
She concluded that the proposed act will help the EU to reach Green Deal targets while protecting competition.
European Commissioner for Energy Kadri Simson noted that the EU already showed what it can achieve by ending its reliance on Russian fossil fuel imports.
She stressed the importance of investing in the domestic production of green technologies to create jobs and strengthen the industry. “This is the next step to a sustainable and green energy transition,” Simson concluded.