10 / 02 / 2023


EARTO Reaction to the EC Proposal for a Green Deal Industrial Plan for the Net-Zero Age

EARTO welcomes the EC proposal for a Green Deal Industrial Plan for the Net-Zero Age. The ability for the EU to develop an industrial base on the technologies that will be needed for the climate and energy transition is at stake. RTOs are at the heart of the creation and scale up of green technologies for industry. As such, EARTO members are ready to contribute to defining an ambitious Green Deal Industrial Plan.

European RTOs have developed and matured state of the art technologies for deployment in all clean tech sectors and are preparing the next generations of technologies already: both through continuous improvement of performance for existing technologies and through developing breakthrough technologies. The transfer of these technologies from non-profit research laboratories to industrial deployment remains a specific challenge in Europe. Europe cannot afford anymore to waste opportunities. The Green Deal Industrial Plan is an opportunity to reconcile and better integrate EU RD&I, Energy and Climate, and Industrial policies all together.

Today, the EC proposes 4 pillars to this new plan: simplified regulatory environment, faster funding, skills and open trade. However, the RD&I and linked technologies’ development/maturation/scaling up are not obviously considered in the plan. In this context, the EC proposal misses to create a Research, Development and Innovation Pillar that should aim at linking the EU industrial strategy towards green tech industries and RD&I public & private investments (going via IPCEIs as well as already running EU RD&I programmes).

The issue at stake is of course about investments and financing. But even most importantly it should be about the choice of the best technological options to be picked for EU industrial value chains for the coming 10 to 20 years based on long term partnerships between industry and their technology providers. In this context, the EU leadership in R&D for low carbon technologies is an asset for Europe’s green deal industrial ambition. Accordingly, EARTO recommends to build a Research, Development and Innovation Pillar supporting the industrial objectives as successfully done in the EU Chips Act for the microelectronics sector. Such a RD&I pillar should then encompass the various existing EU instruments having RD&I components linked to green tech industries.

Read the full paper and further recommendations here