On November 21, the European Parliament has adopted its position on the Net-Zero Industry Act with 376 votes to 139 and 116 abstentions. The Act aims at increasing the share of decarbonisation technologies in the EU and the global market and sets the objective to manufacture in Europe 40 percent of the EU’s annual deployment needs in net-zero technologies by 2030.
Glass for Europe welcomes the MEPs’ willingness to broaden the scope of the text to encompass the entire supply chain and the addition of energy efficiency technologies and high-efficiency industrial process and electrification technologies to the list of net-zero solutions. By doing so, the European Parliament recognises not only the role of solar photovoltaic but also the importance of manufacturing high performance glass for building renovations and the efforts undertaken by flat glass producers to reduce CO2 emissions from their manufacturing processes.
In the coming weeks, the Council of the EU should finalise its position and Glass for Europe hopes for the inter-institutional negotiations to start soon after. The Net-Zero Industry Act can only be a first step to further encourage industrial investments and step-up EU resilience as the current text lacks sufficient and effective support to boost manufacturing capacities of these net-zero solutions in the EU.
Glass for Europe calls for a final legislation agreed ahead of the 2024 European elections, which recognize energy efficiency technologies as net-zero solutions and provides more robust support to these industrial sectors.