Our recommendations & observations:
The Act is ambitious and encouraging when it comes to the production and supply of mature clean technologies. Therefore, we propose to go deeper and harness the potential of Europe’s vibrant and emerging pool of innovators – founders, startups, and scale-ups – to ensure agility, resilience, and long-term advantage and real impact. Only a small part of the Act is dedicated to innovation creation, and even this part is targeted at public sandboxes, which is not enough to ensure the entire pipeline for creating carbon neutral innovation.
Consolidation of money and a focus on non-zero technologies is very welcome. However, the current EU budget has insufficient possibilities for supporting the objectives of the Act. Thus, good intentions can fail if substantial additional funds are not made available. In addition, a particular focus on developing novel clean technologies (apart from mature ones) should be in place.
For emerging cleantech companies, it will be essential to prepare for the opportunities ahead and implement them effectively later on. The Act should therefore identify tangible measures, and the planned NCPs should be ready for rapid implementation. It is essential for all stakeholders to be agile and it is crucial that bureaucratic mechanisms do not hinder the transition to net-zero.
Crucial sectors such as alternative fuels, hydrogen, energy efficiency, industrial decarbonization are not among strategic technologies, meanwhile, they can make a sound contribution to reaching net-zero goals.
