The Industrial Accelerator Act (IAA) is a welcome and necessary step.

But decarbonising Europe’s most emissions-intensive industries – steel, cement, aluminium, and chemicals – requires a transformation in how public money is spent and how markets are shaped. The IAA has the potential to be the instrument that drives that transformation, by sending a clear, credible
demand signal for genuinely low-carbon products.

However, as it stands, the Act falls short of its own ambition in three critical ways: it lacks the robust low-carbon definitions needed to give the demand signal meaning; its procurement quotas are too low and too static to drive market transformation at scale, as they do not yet provide the long-term signals that the industry needs; and the Act does not tie European-origin criteria inseparably to low-carbon requirements.

Read more in our new position paper now:

• The Industrial Accelerator Act can create lead markets, but only if strengthened (pdf)