Proposal for a Net Zero Industry Act

Recommendations for the way forward

Implementing the EU´s Green Deal Industrial Plan for the Net Zero Age

Europe has arrived at a critical junction in terms of its attractiveness as a business location. Not only will the energy crisis continue to place massive strains on companies of all sizes and sectors and their global competitiveness. Europe is also facing harsh competition in the global climate technology race, such as through the U.S. investment programme Inflation Reduction Act or the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative, which stretches our industrial capacity and severely increases the risk of replacing our dependence on fossil fuels by industrial and technological dependence in the future.

With a view to enhancing Europe´s competitiveness and support the fast transition to climate neutrality, the BDI generally welcomes the EU Green Deal Industrial Plan (GDIP) as tabled by the European Commission in February 2023 and its subsequent Proposal for a Regulation on Establishing a Framework of Measures for Strengthening Europe’s Net-Zero Technology Products Manufacturing Ecosystem (“Net Zero Industry Act”)

However, to turn into a solid response to imminent geopolitical and competitiveness challenges while boosting Europe´s global Green Deal innovation and technology leadership as well as a climate-neutral European industrial continent by 2050, significant improvements still have to be brought to the Commission proposal for a Net Zero Industry Act (“NZIA”)

This position paper spells out the initial evaluation and recommendations of German industries for the way forward on the Commission NZIA proposal

In particular, reaching climate neutrality requires the transformation of the entire industry rather than a number of selected sectors “only”, which has also been demonstrated in BDI´s climate path study 2.0