CEO Alliance members have endorsed the policy paper “Revamping Europe’s energy system for competitive industries and quality jobs”, which offers 4 policy recommendations for a revamped energy system that boosts competitiveness and jobs.
In the report The Future of European Competitiveness, Mario Draghi states that Europe must bring down its energy prices and continue to decarbonize to make European companies competitive, which simultaneously offers an opportunity for Europe to make energy more affordable, lead in clean technologies, and revamp economic growth and competitiveness. Europe’s dependency on foreign energy sources, together with non-harmonized energy policies and low investments in infrastructure, creates challenges for our energy resilience and price stability. On top of this, European energy taxes are higher than in peer regions. All this combined results in that we as Europeans have much higher energy costs than our competitors in e.g. US or China.
We therefore urgently need a revamp of Europe’s energy policies, with a focus on incentives and simplification, to create energy self-sufficiency and resilience, lower energy prices and increase decarbonization to boost our competitiveness, economic growth and preserve the European welfare system. At the same time, this is also an opportunity for us. Through our decarbonization journey, we can leverage clean-tech and digitalization of the energy system to innovate, scale-up and export solutions for green energy self-sufficiency. Therefore, the EU Green Deal and upcoming Clean Industrial Deal are major opportunities to rebound Europe’s climate goals, ensure sustainable competitiveness, and secure continued emissions reduction, while incentivizing industries to invest in the green, clean, and digital transformation.
The CEO Alliance provides four policy recommendations for Europe’s future energy system and industry:
- Ensure a secure and affordable supply of green energy – The upcoming Clean Industrial Deal (CID) is a major opportunity for enabling the green transition of the European energy system and heavy emitting industries by incentivizing investments in clean energy infrastructure and technologies, such as grid infrastructure and energy storage, and we call on policymakers to also include the enabling technologies needed for the transition, such as digitalization. An agile CID, paired with full implementation of existing rules and guidelines, will make green energy more affordable, accelerate decarbonization, improve security of supply and lead to economic growth and jobs.
- Harmonise regulation and avoid unnecessary delays in administrative processes – Permitting remains a key hurdle for the deployment of renewable energy installations in the EU, with at least 27 different approaches across the continent resulting in complexity, uncertainty, and therefore limiting investment. Our grids need a swift upgrade to accommodate new electricity needs such as public charging for transport and other industries that are electrifying processes (e.g. steel). Investments need to be enabled, also in R&D, and we call on more use of regulatory sandboxes for pilot projects. We also call for a thorough discussion on energy taxation, which at present is amongst the highest in the world and penalises European industry.
- Further integrate electricity grids to boost renewables uptake and efficiencies – To properly electrify industrial processes and support charging infrastructures, the EU needs to improve the integration of renewable energy into the grid, energy storage technologies, and inter-operability of technologies. This would allow for a more flexible electricity system and encourage the needed anticipated investments in order to optimize balancing. We call on legislators to build on the Electricity Market Design and follow the European Commission’s Grid Action Plan to achieve these goals.
- Promote training to increase the scalability of projects and guarantee a just transition across the Union – Qualified workforce is one of the conditions that need to be met to successfully realize the energy transition, and ensure it happens in a just and equal way through the continent. To this end, we call on Member States to make full use of funding mechanisms such as the “Just Transition Mechanism” while implementing the above recommendations and ensuring nobody is left behind as we move to upgrade our energy system.
Download the paper below to read all the details.
