2024-10-24 05:00:00
The new European Commission, in office since the summer, is committed to changing its «Green Pact» (green deal) of 2019 in one «Clean industrial agreement» (Clean Industry Pact) in the first hundred days of his mandate. Objective: to make industrial decarbonisation one of its priorities, while industry represents around 10% of greenhouse gas emissions on the continent. The stakes are high to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050, especially if the European Union (EU) wants to combine decarbonization and maintaining its competitiveness against Asia and the United States.
The Montaigne Institute examined this complex balance in a report published on Thursday 24 October. Titled “An industrial strategy for the post-carbon era”, this work – the result of a year of research – compares decarbonisation policies in Europe and Asia, in particular in China, Japan and South Korea.
The work is useful as the Draghi report, presented in September by the former president of the European Central Bank to the European Commission, also urges the EU to invest massively in decarbonisation technologies to avoid a crisis “stall” compared to Sino-American competition.
Poor coordination
“Europe’s industrial future will require considerable and continuous investment in so-called green technologies – wind turbines, solar panels, electric batteries, hydrogen, multiplication of electricity grids, etc. However, China knows how to carry out a long-term industrial strategy, but no longer the European Union which thinks only in terms of budget costs”warns Joseph Dellatte, climate, energy and environment expert at the Institut Montaigne and author of the report.
The European policy on industrial decarbonisation therefore remains “embryo”according to the report by the liberal think tank. Disadvantaged by energy two or three times more expensive than that of Asia and the United States, it suffers from poor coordination between EU countries. “Coordination is an absolute condition for success. Instead of European countries developing their own industries and risking competing with each other, as happens today, the Union must act from the top and create industrial clusters that group projects by country or region, based on local needs and activities.”explains Giuseppe Dellatte. In the countries of Southern Europe, the development of solar energy, for example, and in those of the North, that of wind power.
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